Lisa Maynes Desjarlais's Home Page

301e Farris Engineering Center
Department of Computer Science
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-9211 office, -3526 CS lab, -1259 SoftLab lab, -6927 fax
lisa@cs.unm.edu

Welcome to my humble page! I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico,  working on applying reinforcement learning to generating and optimizing control systems. My advisor is Barak Pearlmutter. Under an RAship jointly between EECE and CivE, I am responsible for developing an improved software architecture for SoftLab, a modular toolkit for assembling control systems from soft computing components, and integrating it with CoMeT, a framework for defining and solving computational mechanics problems. I am a member of the Adaptive Computation Group and the Autonomous Control Collective at UNM. Previously, I obtained a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University in 1981, and an M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell University's Program of Computer Graphics in 1986.

From 1989 to July 1998, I worked at the Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center at Sandia National Laboratories. My favorite projects were Graphical Programming/Virtual Collaborative Environments and Small Smart Machines (fondly known as "RoBugs"). I continue to build some of my research software on top of their Umbra simulation/visualization package.

I'm an avid dancer, concentrating these days on West Coast Swing, Hustle, and other forms of partner dance, and a resolute DJ and collector of dance music. Check out our local dance clubs, Strictly Swing...New Mexico and the Albuquerque Swing & Country Dance Club.

Career Interests

My career interests are in the design of intelligent systems, such as robots, software agents, and controllers of complex processes. Such systems have many components, and require contributions from many disciplines. The technical aspects to which I most want to contribute are simulation, automatic generation and optimization of agent behaviors (often in the form of control systems) through machine learning, control system architectures, and the integration of human direction with automation. I also love the practice of large-scale object oriented software design, and want to manage interdisciplinary teams, using structured brainstorming and personal communication practices within system design projects.

Links

Reinforcement Learning

Robotics & Controls

Emergent Computation & Agents

Olfaction

Adaptive Behavior

UNM Department of Computer Science

Electronic Search

Professional Organizations

Dance

Women

Self Transformation

Structured Brainstorming

Social Responsibility

Friends
 
 

lisa@cs.unm.edu: (505) 277-9211 , (505) 277-6927 fax

lmdesja@isrc.sandia.gov: (505) 284-4278 (until July 31 only)