Date: February 18, 2026
Speaker: Hadas Kress-Gazit, Associate Dean for Diversity and Academic Affairs Geoffrey S.M. Hedrick Senior Endowed Professor, Cornell Engineering
Title: Evaluation in robot learning papers
Abstract: In this talk I will examine a couple of recent papers on robot learning, specifically in the context of foundation models, through the lens of "how do I know whether to use this model or not". We will discuss the evaluation sections of these papers, the things they do well, and the things I wish they did. The purpose of this talk is to encourage all of us to be more rigorous when writing and when reviewing papers, especially in the broad area of robot learning.
Bio: Hadas Kress-Gazit is the Geoffrey S.M. Hedrick Sr. Professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, and the Associate Dean for Diversity and Academic Affairs of Cornell Duffield College of Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical and Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and has been at Cornell since 2009. Her research focuses on formal methods for robotics and automation and more specifically on high-level specifications and synthesis for robot control. Her group has explored different types of robotic systems including modular robots, soft robots and swarms, and how formal methods can be used for human-robot interaction. She received an NSF CAREER award in 2010, a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2012, Cornell Engineering’s Excellence in teaching award in 2013 and 2019, and excellence in research award in 2021. She is an IEEE Fellow and has served on DARPA’s Information Science and Technology study group (ISAT), as the program chair for Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2018, the program chair for the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2022, and the president of the RSS board (2019-2023), among other leadership positions in the robotics community.