Laurel Reik, PhD is a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, and also has appointments in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Contextual Robotics Institute, and Design Lab. Dr. Riek directs the Healthcare Robotics Lab, and leads research in human-robot teaming, assistive robotics, embodied AI, and health informatics, and builds intelligent systems which work proximately with people. Riek's current research projects have applications in acute care, neuro-rehabilitation, and home health. The lab is very interested in supporting health equity through community health efforts.
Prof. Riek received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and BS in Logic and Computation from Carnegie Mellon University. Riek served as a Senior Artificial Intelligence Engineer and Roboticist at The MITRE Corporation from 2000-2008, working on learning and vision systems for robots. From 2011-2016 Prof. Riek held the Clare Boothe Luce chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Riek has received the NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR Young Investigator Award, Qualcomm Research Award, and multiple best paper awards. Prof. Riek currently serves on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Human Robot Interaction (THRI) and is the HRI 2023 General Co-Chair.