Nora Ayanian is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Automatic Coordination of Teams Lab at Brown University. She received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Brown, Ayanian was an Andrew and Erna Viterbi Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and a postdoctoral associate at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Ayanian's research focuses on creating end-to-end solutions for coordinating teams of robots that start from high-level specifications and deliver code for individual robots in the team, such as using simple multitouch inputs to control a team of UAVs. Her approach to multirobot systems creates unified solutions that concurrently address task assignment, path planning, and control, and that are broadly applicable across all aspects of multirobot systems and mobile sensor networks, including manufacturing, warehousing, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and emergency response.
Ayanian was named as one of the MIT Technology Review’s 2016 Innovators Under 35 (TR35) as “Visionary”. In 2016 she also received the NSF CAREER award, the Okawa Foundation Research Grant, and, with her coauthors, best paper in the robotics track at the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling. She has also been honored as one of mic.com’s inaugural Mic 50, and as one of IEEE Intelligent Systems “AI’s 10 to Watch”. Her research has most recently been covered by USA Today, Discovery Channel Canada, Tech Insider UK, and other media outlets. She has also been recognized for her mentorship with the 2015 Hanna Reisler Mentorship Award and was named in 2014 to the NerdWallet 40 under 40 Professors who Inspire.
