Seminar: Meeko Oishi

April 11, 2025

Towards Probabilistic Modeling and Control of Human Heterogeneity

Meeko Oishi, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UNM

3:00 pm, UNM Centennial Engineering Center, Room 1026
Online Guests: Contact Prof. Osiński <osinski@chtm.unm.edu> for a Zoom link

Abstract: Despite the ubiquity of human interaction with autonomous systems, few tools exist for modeling, computation, and control that are responsive to human heterogeneity. We seek to ascertain when human heterogeneity is important for control, and to design and assure controllers that are responsive to the uncertainty inherent to human-inthe-loop systems. Our methods are based in both data-driven and modelbased approaches that can accommodate arbitrary, non-Gaussian uncertainty. We developed high-fidelity, data-driven characterizations of human-in-the-loop trajectories, based in conditional distribution embeddings, with application to psychomotor tasks. We have also begun to explore a game theoretic framework for controller synthesis under partial cooperation between players. Lastly, we have developed stochastic processes associated with human decision and action in a computationally efficient manner, without gridding, sampling, or recursion. These methods and tools help address the need for new paradigms and frameworks to enable responsivity to human variability in autonomous systems.

Bio: Meeko Oishi received the B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University in 1998, followed by the M.S. (2000) and Ph.D. (2004) in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (Ph.D. minor, Electrical Engineering). Before joining UNM, she held postdoctoral positions at Sandia National Laboratories and at the National Ecological Observatory Network, and a faculty position at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver. She is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UNM. Her research interests include human-in-the-loop control, stochastic optimal control, and autonomous systems. She is the recipient of the George Bienkowski Memorial Prize at Princeton University, the Truman Postdoctoral Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, the NSF CAREER Award, the UNM Regents’ Lectureship, and the NSF BRITE Fellowship. She was a Visiting Researcher at AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate, and a Science and Technology Policy Fellow at The National Academies.