“Eric Eaton is a faculty member in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of the GRASP (General Robotics Automation, Sensing, Perception) lab. Prior to joining Penn, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the computer science department at Bryn Mawr College. His primary research interests lie in the fields of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data mining with applications to robotics, search & rescue, environmental sustainability, and medicine. In particular, his research focuses on developing versatile AI systems that can learn multiple tasks over a lifetime of experience in complex environments, transfer learned knowledge to rapidly acquire new abilities, and collaborate effectively with humans and other agents through interaction. This research is funded by grants from the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and Lockheed Martin.

Before moving into academia, Eric spent two years as a senior research scientist at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories working in applied research. At Lockheed Martin ATL, he led a number of machine learning research projects in the Artificial Intelligence Lab with a focus on their application for a variety of DoD organizations. While at Lockheed Martin, he was also part-time faculty in computer science at Swarthmore College.

Eric received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning. His dissertation developed methods for selective knowledge transfer between learning tasks and was advised by Marie desJardins. At UMBC, he was a member of the Multi-Agent Planning and LEarning (MAPLE) research group and also a part-time instructor.”