The School of Computer Science recently presented its inaugural JPMorgan Chase Career Development Professorship to Katerina Fragkiadaki, an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department (MLD).

"Career development professorships allow us to support faculty in the relatively early stages of their career, as they expand their sights and follow new paths," said SCS Dean Martial Hebert. "Professorships provide them with not only recognition for what they have already accomplished, but with the flexibility and freedom that can help them explore new directions."

For Fragkiadaki, those directions include building machines that learn to see, act and understand language supervised by humans and by their own interactions with the world. Her lab develops methods for machines to learn to see and act from a few examples, reason about space and geometry, and handle long tails with associative memories and analogical reasoning. 

"This expansion of Carnegie Mellon's partnership with JPMorgan Chase will accelerate the promising work and innovation of very valued early and mid-career faculty members, enabling them to continue to blaze paths in computer science and beyond," said CMU President Farnam Jahanian.

In addition to performing research, Fragkiadaki also teaches "Deep Reinforcement Learning and Control" — one of the most popular classes in MLD — and manages the department's master's degree program.

"This is a woman of great vision and great results and a great passion for teaching," said Manuela Veloso, the Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emerita and head of JPMorgan Chase and Co. AI Research, who was instrumental in establishing the professorship.