Pierce Howell

I'm a 3rd-year Robotics Ph.D. student in the Structured Techniques for Algorithmic Robotics (STAR) Lab at Georgia Tech, advised by Professor Harish Ravichandar. My research interests span robot learning, multi-robot systems, and human-robot interaction. My vision is to enable robots that are self-sufficient yet can perform diverse tasks, learn new behaviors, and collaborate as a team with minimal expert guidance. In line with this vision, my dissertation focuses on developing learning algorithms that learn efficiently and generalize well for complex multi-robot teaming domains.

I earned an M.S. in Robotics from Georgia Tech (2023). I was a recipient of the Science, Mathematics, and Research Transformation (SMART) Scholarship from 2021–2023, and during that time I interned at the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific in 2022 and 2023.

I graduated from San Diego State University (SDSU) with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2021. Upon graduation I was named the College of Engineering's Valedictorian. During my undergraduate studies I was a software and electrical team lead for the SDSU Mechatronics (Robotics) Club, where I helped lead a team that developed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to compete in the 2019 and 2020 Robosub competitions. I worked in the Signal Processing Research Laboratory with Ashkan Ashrafi. I also worked as an REU intern in the Systems and Intelligence Laboratory (SMILE) with Junfei Xie in 2020.