Selected Experience

Google DeepMind, Research Director

Google DeepMind / Google Brain Research, Senior Staff Research Scientist

Google Brain Research, Staff Research Scientist

Robotics at Google / Google Brain, Staff Research Scientist

Robotics at Google / Google Brain, Senior Research Scientist

Waymo / Google X, Senior Research Robotics Engineer

Sandia National Laboratories, Senior Computer Science R&D Engineer

Selected Honors and Awards

50 Women in Robotics you need to know about, Women in Robotics 

IEEE Micro Top Picks 2023 Honorable Mention 

Google Excellence in Leadership Award 

Best of IEEE Computer Architecture Letters 

IEEE Early Career Award in Robotics and Automation 

RL4RealLife at ICML Best Paper Award

Distinguished Alumna

ICRA Best Paper in Service Robotics

Tom L. Popejoy Award

Outstanding Graduate Student in Computer Science Award

Sandia National Laboratories Doctoral Studies Program Fellow

Young Scientist Fellow, Belgrade, Serbia 

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science (with distinction), University of New Mexico,  Albuquerque, NM

Master of Computer Science , University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL

Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

Selected Academic Service

• Advisory board member, University of New Mexico, Computer Science Department, 2019 - present

• Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS Ad Hoc) Committee on RAS Governance Review and Restructuring, 2022 - present

• Member, IEEE RAS Ad Hoc Committee to Explore Synergies in Automation and Robotics (CESAR), 2021 - present

• Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) AdCom, 2021 - 2023

• Co-Chair, Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion, IEEE Robotics Automation Society (RAS) Technical Committee, 2019 - 2022

• Associate Vice President, IEEE Robotics Automation Society (RAS) Members Activities Board, 2018 - 2021

• Invited participant, U.S Robotics Roadmap workshop, 2019

• Panelist, CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) on Machine Learning, National Service Foundation (NSF), 2018

Program Chair

• Program Chair, The International Conference on Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), 2023

• Program Chair, Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2021

Journal and Conference Service

• Senior Editor for Robot Learning, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2023 - present.

• Action Editor, Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2022 - present. 

• Awards Committee Member

  • International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR), 2023

  • Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC) 2023

  • Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC) 2022 

  • Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2020

• Senior Area Chair

  • International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR), 2024

  • International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR), 2023

• Associate Editor, IEEE Robotic and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2018 - 2021

• Area Chair

  • International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2018 - 2021

  • International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2017 - 2022

  • International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR), 2020

  • Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2020,

  • Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2020.

  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018

Workshop organizer

• Co-organizer, AutoRL workshop, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2024

• Co-organizer, Robot Learning in the Cloud: Remote Operations and Benchmarking, RSS 2022

• Co-organizer, Embodied AI workshop, IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) 2020.

• Co-organizer,  The Fourth Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion Workshop, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020. 

• Co-organizer, Algorithms And Architectures For Learning In-The-Loop Systems In Autonomous Flight,  ICRA 2019

• Co-organizer, Becoming a Robot Guru Workshop 3, WAFR 2018

• Lead organizer, Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion 3 Workshop, ICRA 2018

• Co-organizer, Becoming a Robot Guru Workshop 2, RSS 2016

• Lead organizer, Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion 2 Workshop, IROS 2016

• Co-organizer, Becoming a Robot Guru, a workshop on broadening participation in robotics, ICRA 2015

• Co-organizer, Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion Workshop, IROS 2014

Journal reviewer

• International Journal of Computer Vision

• IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)

• International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)

• Robotica journal

• Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control

Conference Reviewer

• ICRA, IROS, ICLR, CDC, MRS, ISRR, WAFR, NeuroIPS, CoRL

Invited Talks

1. A. Faust, “Autonomous Systems in the Large Language Models’ Era,” Bay Area Robotics Symposium, April 5, 2024.

2. A. Beirami, A. Celikyilmaz, Y. N. Chen, A. Faust, L. Li, M. Littman, L. Li, Panel on LLM and RL, The 38th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2024.

3. A. Faust, “Autonomous Agents in the Age of Large Language Models,” Synergy of Reinforcement Learning and Large Language Models at The 38th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Feb. 26, 2024.

4. A. Beutel, H. Hoos, T. Scialom, A. Jiang, J. Lukasik, A. Faust, Panel on Trustworthiness & Alignment, The International Conference on Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), Sep 14, 2023.

5. J. Preskill, R. P. Feynman, A. Faust, J. Tylko, D. Mindell, “Panel on Quantum Computation and AI: Advances and Applications,” Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board Joint Meeting Spring 2023, National Academy of Sciences, June 7, 2023.

6. V. Vanhoucke and A. Faust, “The Future of Robots for good: The Quest for Embodied AI,” AI for Good: Keynote, Online, January 31, 2023, Views 2400+.

7. A. Faust, “Toward Autonomy at Scale,” Keynote, Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), Auckland, New Zealand, December 18, 2022, views 277. [Online]. Available: YouTube

8. A. Faust, “Toward Scalable Autonomy,” Keynote, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Kyoto Japan, October 24, 2022. Attendees: 2000+.            

9. A. Faust, “Automated Reinforcement Learning Tutorial,” Tutorial, AutoML Fall School, Freiburg, Germany, October 13, 2022, Views 167.

10. A. Faust, Y. Miao, R. Song, “AutoRL Tutorial,” Tutorial The International Conference on Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), August 15, 2022, Views 100+.

11. A. Faust, “Toward Scalable Autonomy,” 2nd Workshop on Scaling Robot Learning, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) New York City, NY, June 27, 2022, Views 39.

12. A. Faust, Keynote, IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO), May 30, 2022.

13. A. Faust, “Agent's Nature vs Nurture,” Invited talk, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA): Workshop on Motion Planning with Implicit Neural Representations of Geometry, Philadelphia, PA, May 27, 2022, Views 160.

14. A. Faust, “Reinforcement Learning Keynote,” Keynote, Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (EEML): Serbian Machine Learning Workshop, Belgrade, Serbia, May 7, 2022. 

15. A. Faust, “Deep Reinforcement Learning,” Invited Talk, Re-Work, 2022. 

16. A. Faust, “Invited Lecture on Autonomy,” Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 2022

17. A. Faust, “Towards Scalable Autonomy,” Stanford Robotics and Autonomous Systems Seminar, Stanford, CA, January 28, 2022, views 5,029.

18. K. Tran, H. Ono, A. Faust and M. Roberts, Panelist, Industry Panel: Physical Reasoning and Inductive Biases , the Real World Workshop, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), December 14, 2021. 

19. S. Herbert, A. Garg, E. Brunskill, A. Faust and D. Hadfield-Menell, “Safe RL Debate,” Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS): Safe and Robust Control of Uncertain Systems Workshop, December 13, 2021. [Online]. Available: Video

20. A. Faust, Invited talk, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, November 2021. 

21. A. Faust, Invited talk, Wonderland AI Summit, October 21, 2021.

22. A. Faust, “Self-supervision in Motion Planning & panel,” Invited talk, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): CLAMP, September 27, 2021. Views 300+.

23. A. Faust, “Learning to Learn for reinforcement learning & panel,”  Invited talk, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): SPAR, Prague, Czech Republic, September 27, 2021.

24. A. Faust, Panelist on RL & Control & HCI, IROS: RL-Conform, September 27, 2021.

25. A. Faust, “Toward Autonomous Real World Robot Navigation,” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): IPLC, September 27, 2021.

26. A. Faust, Moderator, Response and Group Discussion, Frontiers of Evolutionary Computation: SFI Workshop on Evolutionary Computation, Santa Fe, NM, July 21, 2021.

27. A. Faust, Invited Talk, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), Workshop on Social Robot Navigation, July 13, 2021.

28. A. Faust, “Integrated planning and learning,” Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), Workshop on Integrating Learning and Planning, July 12, 2021.

29. A. Faust, Invited Talk, AI Frontiers Meetup, June 2021.

30. A. Faust, “Real World Robot Navigation,” Invited Talk, IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR), Embodied AI workshop, New Orleans, LA, June 20, 2021, views 392.

31. A. Faust, “Towards Autonomous Robot Navigation in Real World,” Invited talk, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Perception and Action in Dynamic Environments, June 10, 2021, Views 200.

32. N. Díaz-Rodríguez and A. Faust, Panelist. International Conference of Learning Representations (ICLR), A Roadmap to Neverending RL, Online, May 7, 2021.

33. A. Faust, Invited seminar, University of Utah, 2021.

34. A. Faust, Multidrone Cinematography Symposium, Carnegie Mellon University, 2020.

35. A. Faust, “Towards autonomous agents through evolution, reinforcement, and self-supervision,” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS): Perception, learning, and controls workshop, November 2020, 100+ attendees.

36. A. Faust, “Toward autonomous agents through evolution, reinforcement, and self-supervision,” Invited Talk, Summer Symposium on AI Research, July 25, 2020, 3000+ live attendees. Views 861. 

37. A. Faust, V. J. Reddi, “Let it be resolved that: Robotics research is over-reliant on benchmark datasets and simulation,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Debates on the Future of Robotics Research, 2020, views 2,500+. 

38. A. Faust, “Toward autonomous agents through evolution, reinforcement, and self-supervision,” University of California, Santa Cruz, 2020.

39. A. Faust, “Deep learning for robot navigation and Panel,” Google ML Summit, Kirkland, WA, November, 2019, views 3,533.

40. A. Faust, “Deep Learning for Motion Planning,” Demo, CoRL, Osaka, Japan, October, 2019

41. A. Faust, “Deep learning motion and task planning,” University of Illinois: Illinois Computer Science, October 21, 2019.

42. A. Faust, “Deep Learning for Motion Planning,” Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 2019.

43. A. Faust, “Deep learning motion and task planning,” University of California, Berkeley DREAM Seminar: CPAR, September 2019, [Online]. Available: YouTube

44. A. Faust, “Robotics at Google: Navigation in Dynamic Environments,” Demo, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Long Beach, CA, June, 2019.

45. A. Faust, “Task and Motion Planning - Learn locally, apply globally,” University of California, Berkeley BAIR/Google Meeting, Berkeley, CA, 2019.

46. A. Faust, “Deep Learning for Motion Planning in the Dynamic World,” Stanford University: Google Navigation Workshop, Mountain View, CA, 2019.

47. A. Faust, “Deep Learning Motion and Task Planning,” University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 2019.

48. A. Faust, “Overview of Deep Learning Motion and Task Planning,” Industry forum at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Montreal, Canada, 2019  

49. A. Faust, “Robot navigation with automated reinforcement learning,” AI for Mankind, Adobe, San Jose, CA, April 11, 2019.

50. A. Faust, “Automating Robot Learning Experiments”, Automating Robot Experiments: Manipulation and Learning, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, 2018.

51. A. Faust, “Robot Navigation: From Abilities to Capabilities,” Machine Learning in Robot Motion Planning Workshop, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid Spain, October 5, 2018.

52. A. Faust, “Robot Navigation: From Abilities to Capabilities,” University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. 2018.

53. A. Faust, AI for Transportation Summit, Deepmind, Mountain View, CA, 2018.

54. A. Faust, “PEARL: Continuous Action Model-based Reinforcement Learning,” Columbia University, New York, NY, 2018.

55. A. Faust, “PEARL: Continuous Action Model-based Reinforcement Learning,” Electronic Materials Symposium (EMS), Palo Alto, CA, 2018.

56. A. Faust, Plenary speaker, Society of Women Engineers WE17 Plenary on AI and Hi. - 15,000 attendees. 2017

57. A. Faust, “Self-Driving Cars, Quadrotors, and Computing, Three Faces of Motion Planning,” University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 2016.

58. A. Faust, “Self-Driving Cars, UAVS, Computing, Many Faces of Motion Planning,” University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, 2016

59. A. Faust, “Google Self-driving Car Project,” Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math Committee, Palo Alto Unified School District, Palo Alto, CA, 2016.

60. A. Faust, “Aerial Coffee Delivery: Preference Appraisal Reinforcement Learning in Presence of Stochastic Input Disturbances for Control-affine Systems," INFORMS Computing Society Conference, Richmond, VA, January 13, 2015.

61. A. Faust, “PrEference Appraisal Reinforcement Learning (PEARL)," Robotics Seminar, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, 2014. 

62.  A. Faust, “Preference Appraisal Reinforcement Learning for Space Applications," Seventh Workshop on Fault-Tolerant Spaceborne Computing Employing New Technologies, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, June 17, 2014.  

Teaching, Guest Lectures, and Tutorials

1. Guest lecturer, “Introduction in AI” University of New Mexico, 2023

2. Guest lecturer, University of Texas, Austin, 2023

3. Instructor, “Automated Reinforcement Learning Tutorial,” AutoML Fall School, Freiburg, Germany,. YouTube, 2022

4. Instructor, “AutoRL Tutorial,” The International Conference on Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), August 15, 2022.

5. Guest lecturer, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022

6. Guest lecturer, ML 101 @ University of New Mexico, 2021

7. Instructor, Reinforcement Learning Tutorial, Waymo, 2020.

8. Guest lecturer, “Introduction to Reinforcement Learning”, Harvard University, 2019.

9. Instructor, “Meta-talk – How to give a talk?”, Google, 2019.

10. Instructor, “How to be a Good Collaborator?”, Google, 2019.

11. Instructor, “Reinforcement Learning and Robotics,” Girls in AI club at Palo Alto High School, 2019

12. Instructor, “Reinforcement Learning and Robotics,” Robotics Club, Cupertino High School, 2018

13. Instructor, “Making Cars Drive Themselves”, Google Tech Day, 2016 - 2017

14. Instructor, “Google Self-driving car project,” Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, Palo Alto Unified School District, 2016

15. Instructor, “Reinforcement Learning 101”, Waymo, 2016.

16. Instructor, “Glassbox machine learning for Waymo”, Waymo, 2016

17. Instructor, “Introduction to Sequential Decision-making with Reinforcement Learning,” Sandia Free University, 2015

18. Founder and coach, Dennis Chavez Elementary Math Club, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2012 - 2015

19. Guest Lecturer, “Reinforcement Learning,” Autonomous Mobile Robots, Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering, University of New Mexico 2014 

20. Guest Lecturer, “Reinforcement learning,” Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, University of New Mexico, 2012 - 2014.

Patents

Issued

1. P. Shah, D. Hakkani-Tur, J. Kew, M. Fiser, A. Faust. “Controlling A Robot Based on the Free-Form Natural Language Input,” (2024) Patent #: US 11,941,504.

2. A. Faust, D. Hakkani-Tur, I. Gur and U. Rueckert, “Automatic navigation of interactive web documents.” (2023). Patent #: US 11,734,375 B2

3. J. Tan, S. Ha, T. Zhang, X. Pan, B. A. Ichter and A. Faust., “Systems and methods for training a machine learned model for agent navigation.” (2022). Patent #: US 11,436,441 B1

4. T. J. Draelos, A. Faust, H. A. Knox and M. G. Peterson, “Systems, methods and computer program products for self-tuning sensor data processing.” (2020). Patent #: US 10,837,811 B1

5. A. Faust, M. Devin, Y. J. Chen, F. Morley, V. Furman and C. A. Fuertes Pascual, “Interactive autonomous vehicle agent,” (2019). Patent #: US 11,067,988 B1, US 10254759 B1

6. A. Faust and N. Fairfield, “Unexpected impulse change collision detector.” (2019). Patent #: US 10,311,658 B2, KR 10,2205,240 B1, CN 109,789,777 B, JP 7,263,233 B2,

7. A. P. Ruymgaart, L. Tapia, A. Faust and R. Fierro, “Redundant component and intelligent computerized control system for multi-rotor VTOL aircraft,” (2017). Patent #: US 9,828,107 B1

Applications

8. J. D Co-Reyes, Y. Miao, G. Tucker, A. Faust, Esteban Real, “Guided Evolution With Binary Predictors For ML Program Search,” application 2023.

9. A. Faust, H.-T. Chiang, A. Francis, M. Fiser, “Deep reinforcement learning-based techniques for end to end robot navigation,” (2021) Application #: 17/275459

• J. D. Co-Reyes, Y. Miao, D. Peng, S. V. Levine, Q. V. Le, H. Lee and A. Faust, “Reinforcement learning algorithm search” (2022). Application #: 17/338,093

Media

Interviews and Authored Articles

• Author, “Evolving Reinforcement Learning Algorithms,” Google AI Blog, 2021

• Author, “Model-Based RL for Decentralized Multi-agent Navigation,” Google AI Blog, 2021

• Contributor to the RL section, Google Research: Looking Back at 2020, and Forward to 2021, Google AI Blog 2021

• Interviewee, 12 Questions with Aleksandra Faust, ML at GA Tech Blog, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019

• Interviewee, Inside Google’s Rebooted Robotics Program, New York Times, 2019

• Author, “Long Range Robotic Navigation with AutoRL” Google AI Blog. Follow-up press: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], 2019.

• Interviewee, “This Google Research Scientist Helps Robots Make Good Decisions,” PC Magazine, 2018

• Interviewee, “Meet the People Who Train the Robots (to Do Their Own Jobs)”, New York Times, 2017

• Interviewee, Immigrant Stories, Google, 2017.

• Author, Alum News, Newsletter The Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) Newsletter, Summer/Fall, 2015.

• Interviewee "Sandia robotics scientist wins prestigious UNM dissertation award," Sandia Daily News, 2015

• Author, “Reinforcement learning and planning for preference balancing tasks,” AI Matters 1, 3, 8-12., 2015. 

Notable Media Coverage

• Wikipedia: Artificial_general_intelligence, 2024

• Bloomberg, AI Companies Are Obsessed with AGI. No One Can Agree What Exactly It Is, 2024 

• The Economist, How to define artificial general intelligence, 2024

• ZDNET, What is artificial general intelligence?, 2024  

• Forbes: Figuring Out What Artificial General Intelligence Consists Of Is Enormously Vital And Mindfully On The Minds Of AI Researchers At Google DeepMind, 2023

• Discover Magazine, How to Measure The Personality of Your AI System | Discover Magazine, 2023 

• Science Magazine: Who needs a teacher? Artificial intelligence designs lesson plans for itself, 2021

• Techxplore: A framework for indoor robot navigation among humans, 2020

• VentureBeat: Google’s AI helps robots navigate around humans in offices, 2020 

• ZDNet, “Forget Go, Google helps AI learn to book flights on the Web” 2018

• ZDNet, “Google suggests all software could use a little robot AI” 2018

• “Multicopter’s Smart Technology Provides Safer, More Efficient Delivery System,” The Innovation Door to The University of New Mexico, Vol. XXVII, pp 2,5. 2014