Nate Koenig

Nate Koenig joined Willow Garage as a research engineer in January of
2011. Prior to joining Willow Garage, Nate Koenig studied Human Robot
Interaction (HRI) at the University of Southern California (USC) in
the Interaction Lab lead by Prof. Maja Mataric'. Nate's current focus
is split between Learning from Demonstration (LfD) and robot
simulation. While at USC, Nate studied Bayesian approaches for LfD in
conjunction with improved interfaces to handle communication between a
human teacher and robot student. This work continues at Willow Garage
with a strong focus on developing a robot system capable of learning
household tasks from people with limited or no robotic experience.

As a master student as USC, Nate co-started the Gazebo simulator with
Prof. Andrew Howard. The goal of Gazebo is to simulate high-fidelity
environments to aid in the development of robotic algorithms and
systems. Nate's work on Gazebo continues at Willow Garage, where he
collaborates with Dr. John Hsu.

Nate started his academic career at the Rochester Institute of
Technology where he earned a B.S in computer science. A one year
hiatus to Xerox then lead him to the computer science mater program at
USC, where he joined the Interaction Lab. Upon completion of his M.S
degree, Nate continued his education at USC in the PhD program working
with Prof. Maja Mataric'.