Kaylene Caswell Stocking is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer sciences, advised by Professor Claire Tomlin. Her research lies at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and cognitive science. She is especially interested in understanding the kinds of representations that support generalization and learning about one's environment through interaction by both developing novel robotics algorithms inspired by what we know about how humans learn about the world, and by studying existing algorithms and their connections to the representations used by humans. More broadly, she is fascinated by what goes into 'intelligent behavior' across many different implementations, from octopuses to humans to mobile robots.
As someone who was first inspired to go into this field because of popular science writing, Kaylene is passionate about public outreach for science. As a Kavli Fellow, she aims to work on projects that improve the alignment between AI research and public perception of AI. Importantly, this is a two-way street: people outside of AI circles deserve a clearer understanding of what technologies are being developed and how they will be impacted by them, but what AI researchers focus on and how they see their work should also be better aligned with what society actually wants from these technologies.
You can find more about Kaylene at her personal website or her blog: https://www.robotsliketea.com.
