Marynel Vázquez

I am an Assistant Professor in Yale’s Computer Science Department, where I lead the Yale Interactive Machines Group (IMG). My main area of research is Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). An updated list of my publications can be found in Google Scholar.

Before Yale, I was a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab working on the JackRabbot project. I closely collaborated with Disney Research while I was a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute (RI) at Carnegie Mellon University, and worked on assisted photography while pursuing my M.S. degree at the RI as well. Even before then, I built and learned how to fly a remote-controlled helicopter! This allowed me to work on video stabilization for my bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Universidad Simón Bolívar.

Research

My work focuses on advancing the social competence of robots, i.e., their ability to perceive, reason about, and generate appropriate behavior during human-robot interactions. The challenge is enabling robots to work well across social contexts, adapting their behavior to different users and situations (e.g., based on user preferences, changing human goals, or how people perceive them). My research applies to varied application domains, such as robots in workplaces or homes, where people would benefit from robot assistance.

Additionally, we care about robots working well in group settings, because multi-party interactions are common in many environments where we see robots having a positive impact. Thus, we often study interesting social phenomena that emerge naturally, like spatial patterns of behavior or group social influence. A key idea that has driven our technical work in group HRI is abstracting interactions as graphs. This allows robots to reason about individual, relationship, and group factors in unison (e.g., see our work on group detection, pose generation, and learning policies for robots that interact in groups of varying sizes).

My approach is interdisciplinary: it combines AI, behavioral science, and design. I enjoy building robotic systems to demonstrate ideas in practice (like Chester, or Shutter). Also, my group often builds simulation environments to facilitate the early development and testing of social robot systems (e.g., see SEAN and SEAN-EP).

My work has been recognized by different awards, such as a 2024 AFOSR YIP Award, a 2022 NSF CAREER Award, a Google Research Scholar Award, two Amazon Research Awards, and a Microsoft AI and the New Future of Work Award. My publications – coauthored with my students and collaborators – have also received recognition, including Best Paper Awards (HRI’23, RO-MAN’22) and other paper nominations (e.g., HRI’21, IROS’18, and RO-MAN’16).

If you are interested in joining my lab, please read this note about open positions at Yale IMG before contacting me.

News

Below are a few recent news from my research group and events that I have participated in: See more detailed news.

Teaching

• Building Interactive Machines, Yale University

  This project-based course brings together methods from Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, and Human-Computer Interaction to enable interactive machines to perceive and act in dynamic environments. Part of the course examines approaches for perception with a variety of devices and algorithms; the other part focuses on methods for decision making. The course is a combination of lectures, reviews of state-of-the-art papers, discussions, coding assignments, and a semester-long team project.

  Course Offerings:

  • Fall 2026
  • Fall 2025 (re-numbered to CPSC 4590/5590)
  • Fall 2022
  • Fall 2021
  • Fall 2020
  • Fall 2019 (re-numbered to CPSC 459/559)
  • Fall 2018 (CPSC 659)

• Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction, Yale University

  This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). It covers principles and techniques in the design, development, and evaluation of interactive systems, and provides students with an introduction to UX Design and User-Centered Research. Additionally, some classes will focus on emergent areas within HCI, like Human-Robot Interaction, AR/VR, and Fabrication. The course is organized as a series of lectures, presentations, a mid-term exam, and group projects on designing new interactive systems.

  Course Offerings:

  • Spring 2026 (re-numbered to CPSC 4840/5840)
  • Spring 2024
  • Spring 2023
  • Spring 2021 (re-numbered to CPSC 484/548)
  • Spring 2019 (CPSC 429/529)