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Radhika NagpalProfessor of Computer ScienceSchool of Engineering and Applied Sciences & Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering Harvard University 235 Maxwell Dworkin 33 Oxford Street,Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: 617-496-6434 rad at eecs harvard |
 
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Research Interests: My group is interested in engineering and understanding self-organizing systems; we investigate many topics on the border of CS and biology. Two main areas are: (1) Biologically-inspired multi-agent systems: algorithms, programming paradigms, and modular/swarm robotics (2) Biological multi-agent systems: computational models, multicellular morphogenesis, collective behavior. For more about our lab: SSR website.
Teaching: On sabbatical (Sept 2012 - Aug 2013)
Short bio: I am a professor in Computer Science, in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I am also a core faculty member of the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where I co-lead the BioRobotics Platform. Before becoming faculty, I spent a year as a research fellow in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, where I am still affiliated. I was a graduate student and postdoc lecturer at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and a member of the Amorphous Computing Group and the Bell Labs GRPW graduate fellowship program. I am grateful to have received the Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship Award (2005), NSF Career Award (2007), the Thomas D. Cabot associate professor chair (2009), and the Borg Early Career Award (2010).
Contact: I am on sabbatical this academic year. Feel free to send me email, but I apologize that due to the large volume of email I may not be able to reply promptly.
News!:
See videos of the IROS 2011 demo of 100 kilobots and other projects on our new Youtube Channel
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News!
Kilobot gets slashdotted! See Slashdot (june 18) and IEEE Spectrum blog article, amongst others. The goal of this project is to create a low-cost scalable swarm for research and education.
Victor Lesser IFAAMAS Distinguished Dissertation Award, Runner-up: Chih-han Yu received the runner-up prize for his phd thesis on Self-Adaptive Multiagent Systems, at AAMAS 2011.
Funky Shapes and Pushy Neighbors, 1/2011: Tyler, Radhika and colleagues' work on neighbor influence in cell division was published in Cell and chosen as one of the research highlights. BECA Award, 5/2010: Radhika is one of the recipients of the 2010 Anita Borg Early Career Award, given by the Computing Research Association's CRA-W committee.
Boston Globe, 3/18/2010: The Harvard-MIT robocup team and the collective construction projects are featured on the front page of the globe.
Harvard receives $10M NSF Expeditions grant for the RoboBee Project. (Aug 2009) (website) |
Self-Organising Systems ResearchBiological systems get tremendous mileage by using vast numbers of cheap and unreliable components to achieve complex goals reliably. For example, cells with identical DNA cooperate to form complex structures, such as ourselves, with incredible reliability in the face of cell death, variations in cell numbers, and changes in the environment. Emerging technologies have made it possible to create our own large-scale multi-agent systems, by bulk-manufacturing tiny computing and sensing agents and embedding these into materials and the environment. We would like to build novel applications from these technologies --- vast sensor-rich environments, robot swarms and reconfigurable modular robots, programmable materials. A key challenge is achieving the kind ofreliability and complexity that cells achieve:
My research interest is developing programming paradigms for robust collective behavior, inspired by biology. Developmental biology, how cells cooperate in tissues and multicellular organisms, can provide insights into how global self-repair and adaptation can be achieved through simple local behaviors. The study of social insects can teach us how to program cooperation and adaptation amongst mobile agents. Ultimately, the goal is to create a framework for the design and analysis of self-organising multi-agent systems. My group's approach is to formalize these strategies as algorithms, analysis, theoretical models, and programming languages. We are especially interested in global-to-local compilation, the ability to specify user goals at the high level and automatically derive provable strategies at the agent level. This methodology is applicable to a wide range of distributed multi-agent systems, from wireless sensor networks to modular and swarm robotics, and we pursue both theory and physical implementations of our work, especially in robotics. My other research interest is understanding robust collective behavior in biological systems. Building artificial systems can give us insights into how complex global properties can arise from identically-programmed parts --- for example, how cells can form scale-independent patterns, how large morphological variations can arise from small genetic changes, and how complex cascades of decisions can tolerate variations in timing. I am interested in mathematical and computational models of multi-cellular behavior, that capture hypotheses of cell behavior and cell-cell interactions as multi-agent systems, and can be used to provide insights into systems level behavior that should emerge. We work in close collaboration with biologists, and currently study growth and pattern formation in the fruit fly wing. Research Group: Selected Publications:
Media: Academic:
Awards:
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Teaching:
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CS182: Intelligent Machines: Reasoning, Actions, and Plans
(Fall 2009, Fall 2010) This course covers the most important basic ideas and techniques of artificial intelligence (AI), with an emphasis on deterministic and observable environments. Topics include: algorithms for search and optimization, constraint-satisfaction, game-playing, logic formalisms and inference/theorom-proving, planning and scheduling, embodied agents and distributed AI. As part of this course we also discuss many applications, case studies, and the philosophy behind artificial intelligence research. (Offered every fall) |
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CS 266:Bio-inspired Multi-agent
Systems (Fall 04-08, Spring 10, next offered Spring 2012) This class will survey the state of the art in biologically-inspired approaches to designing robust collective behavior, in diverse domains. Topics include: swarm intelligence and applications, multicellular biology and amorphous computing, bio-inspired robotics, evolution-inspired systems, synthetic biology. Students will lead discussions of research papers and undertake a semester-long research project. |
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CS 189r: Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems a.k.a Can Robots Play Soccer?
(CS189r Spring 2011, CS199r Spring 2009) Building autonomous robotic systems requires understanding how to make robots that observe, reason, act and coordinate. In this project-based course, we studied this area in the context of developing an autonomous robot soccer team. This course built upon the RFC Cambridge small-size league robot soccer infrastructure, and most recently the ePuck educational robot. At the end of the course we host a competition with visiting teams! |
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CS 51:Introduction to Computer Science II (Spring 2005-08 - now taught by Prof. Greg Morrisett) This course is about Abstraction and Design; understanding how to use abstractions to design programs that are clear, efficient and elegant. We cover abstract models for computational processes and their concrete realization --- functional abstraction, data abstraction, object-oriented design, and finally programming languages as the ultimate abstraction. |
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SB 301: Special Topics in Systems Biology
(Fall 2005) An exploration of new directions for the field of systems biology. We discuss unsolved questions in biology and new approaches offered by systems biology. Topics included theory of biological networks, understanding multicellular systems, genomics as a toolkit, and non-genetic variation. Instructors: Galit Lahav, Kit Parker, Radhika Nagpal, Vamsi Mootha, Andrew Murray, Carl Pabo. |
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Courses taught at MIT, as a postdoctoral lecturer
MIT 6.042: Mathematics for Computer Scientists: Fall01-02, with Prof. Albert Meyer. ( MIT OpenCourseWare version) MIT 6.978: Biologically Motivated Programming Technology for Robust Systems: Fall 2002. (final projects) MIT 6.033: Computer Systems Engineering: Spring 2003, Recitation Instructor. MIT 2004 IAP Course on Synthetic Biology, with Drew Endy, Tom Knight, and Pam Silver. |
Undergraduate Clubs and OutReach Activities
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Outreach Program Our lab uses inspiration from nature to design computing and robotic systems. We enjoy presenting our work to K-12 students and getting them excited about science and engineering. We have several non-technical presentations and robot demonstrations that can travel to a school or event, and we can also host short lab tours in our lab. Although we are a small lab, we try to do a few outreach events every semester and we are especially interested in reaching minorities that are underrepresented in engineering. You can read more about the events we have done on the webpage link. If you are interested in having students visit the lab, or us bringing a workshop to you, contact Radhika by email. |
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Robotic Futbol Club (RFC) Cambridge
RFC Cambridge is the Harvard-MIT undergraduate RoboCup soccer team. We took our first team of autonomous robots to play soccer in the Robocup US Open held at Georgia Tech (2006). Then they headed to Germany to compete in the International Robocup Competition!. Our very own RFC Members were even featured on CARTOON NETWORK! In 2009, we hosted the U.S Open Small-size Robot Soccer Competition at Hilles Penthouse, Harvard University. The Harvard College Engineering Society (HCES) is the umbrella undergraduate group aimed at promoting engineering and cross disciplinary collaboration on campus - i.e. We do COOL things. Come join us! Faculty Advisors: Radhika Nagpal, Robert Wood Highlights video, 2007 |
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iGEM Intercollegiate Genetically Engineered Machine
Competition Although I no longer participate in iGEM activities, happy to talk to any one who is interested in joining. Each year many universities compete in iGEM --- to design, build and characterize genetically-encoded finite state machines. The goal is to create 'living' machines by instructing cells to for example count, decode signals, or produce specific patterns. The challenge is to go from idea, to design, to DNA, to implementation (in cells) in 3 months! The Harvard Team consists of undergraduates from many different disciplines, and they have built many things from bacteria that can propogate a pulse, to dna structures that self-assemble. Read about it here: Gazette Article (Aug 25, 2005) and The New York Times (Nov, 2005); the Harvard iGEM 2006 team project on DNA nanostructures for drug delivery ( MIT Technology Review article); Harvard's 2008 team won gold with their bactricity project |
Other Fun Stuff
As an undergraduate at MIT, I co-founded the MIT Bhangra Club and taught there for many years (1994-2004 website). I also enjoy drawing and painting (my art album) and I did the artwork for Chowk, a community website started by my entrepreneur friend Umair Khan, who is also a great writer. These days I spend alot of my time with my husband and our two kids, who all also happen to like art, dance, robots, etc - Go figure!
