About Me

I’m Skye, a PhD candidate in George Konidaris’ lab at Brown University. I’m interested in how robots can learn skills they can adapt to unfamiliar environments. My current research focuses on how robots can maximially generalize from a few skill demonstrations by learning to compose models that explain why those demonstrations worked, and on jointly leveraging learned world models and model-free policies to enable robots to adapt their learned skills to conditions they’ve never seen before. I’ve also worked on learning skills and skill representations for Task and Motion Planning, and on efficient RL for learning real-robot manipulation skills. I received the NSF GRFP in 2021. I’ll be graduating in Spring 2027, and am interested in postdoc and teaching opportunities for embodied AI and robotics.

I interned at RAI in 2024. I did my undergrad at MIT, working in MIT’s Learning and Intelligent Systems group with Leslie Kaelbling and Tomás Lozano-Pérez. I participated in CMU’s Robotics Institute Summer Scholar REU in 2020, working with Oliver Kroemer in the Intelligent Autonomous Manipulation lab. I was introduced to research by Nicholas Gans, then at University of Texas at Dallas’ SeRViCE lab. I participated in FIRST as a proud member of team FTC 7172, Technical Difficulties.

I’m also a writer, artist, and illustrator interested in accessible science communication. I draw a series of short comics exploring hard problems in robotics and how roboticists think about solving them. (If you found me at a conference, let me know if you want one! I usually try to print some to hand out.) You can find more of my illustration work under the Portfolio tab.

I set aside some dedicated time each week for mentoring undergrads and junior PhD students. In particular, if you’re a trans or LGBT+ student interested in robotics (or in pursuing a PhD in robotics/an adjacent field), reach out over email, and I’d be happy to find a time to chat!