Sabine Hauert, Ph.D.
Human Frontier Science Program Cross-Disciplinary Fellow
Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

shauert@mit.edu

MISSION
Artificial and biological vehicles, including nanoparticles, bacteria, viruses, and cells of the immune system have been engineered for medical applications to transport functional cargos to destinations in the body. Over time, vehicles have become increasingly intelligent in their ability to move, sense, and act. They follow chemical gradients, selectively bind and unbind to cells or molecules in their environments, and perform controlled release of cargos.

However, strict constraints on payload and pharmacokinetics limit the motion and functionalities of individual vehicles. The next frontier is therefore to have vehicles cooperate to synergistically improve their behavior.

The field of swarm engineering has long been investigating ways to make simple agents cooperate to achieve emergent behaviors. During my PhD at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (EPFL) we used artificial evolution and bio-inspiration to design controllers for swarms of flying robots that were deployed in reality.

Building on this experience, I am now creating a framework for the automatic design of swarm systems using bio-inspiration, machine learning and crowdsourcing that is tailored to biomedical and synthetic biology applications.

My current position at the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT provides a unique opportunity to bring swarm systems implemented in silico to the bench.


VIDEOS


KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION
President, co-founder and interviewer at the ROBOTS podcast aimed at bringing robotics to the general public through bi-weekly audio interviews of more than 150 high-profile people in robotics.
Media Editor for the Autonomous Robots journal (Springer) responsible for presenting the latest publications in a reader-friendly manner on the Autonomous Robots Blog.


EDUCATION
EPFL, Switzerland (2006-2011) PhD in Robotics
EPFL, Switzerland (2005-2006) MSc in Computer Science
CMU, USA (2004-2005) Exchange Student in Computer Science (4.0 GPA)
EPFL, Switzerland (2001-2004) BSc in Computer Science

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
MIT, USA (2011-now) Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research under the supervision of Prof. Bhatia.

EPFL, Switzerland (2006-2011) PhD on Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) under the supervision of Prof. Floreano and Dr. Zufferey

EPFL, Switzerland (2005-2006) Internship then Master project on the Simulation of Swarming MAVs for Communication Relay at the LIS under the supervision of Prof. Floreano and Dr. Zufferey

CMU, USA (2005) Robocup team member working on the AIBO robots at the MultiRobot Lab under the supervision of Prof. Veloso

EPFL, Switzerland (2004) Student researcher at the Laboratory of Software Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Strohmeier


EVENT ORGANIZATION
Co-organizer of the Special Session on Evolutionary Robotics at IEEE CEC2009.
Organization committee of the Flying Insects and Robot Symposium 2007.

PROGRAM COMMITTEES
IEEE CEC 2010 Special Session on Evolutionary Robotics
AI Video Competition 2009 and 2010

MEDIA COVERAGE
Our work has been widely covered in the media and our videos have been viewed more than 200'000 times on YouTube. Coverage includes CNN, THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL, WIRED, ENGADGET, POPSCI, and NEW SCIENTIST.


TALKS
IROS 2011, San Francisco USA
Sematron 2011, Sao Carlos BR (invited)
Lift 2011, Geneva CH (invited)
Nano-Tera Workshop 2010, Interlaken CH (invited)
DARS 2010, Lausanne CH
ICRA 2010, Alaska USA
ECCS 2009, Warwick UK (invited)
BIOWIRE 2009, Cambridge UK (invited)
IEEE CEC 2009, Trondheim NO

AWARDS
HFSP Cross-Disciplinary Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded in 2011.
Best Video awards in artificial intelligence and robotics in 2008 and 2011.
First place at the 2005 Robocup US Open with the CMU team.
CMU deans list 2004.
Study abroad scholarship for CMU in 2004.

MAIN PUBLICATIONS

Ph.D. Thesis

Hauert, S. (2010) Evolutionary Synthesis of Communication-Based Aerial Swarms. Ph.D. Thesis, 2010. [detailed record] [bibtex]

Journal Papers

Hauert, S., Leven, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2010) Beat-based synchronization and steering for groups of fixed-wing flying robots. Proceedings of International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotics Systems, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics Series, in press. [detailed record] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2009) Evolved swarming without positioning information: an application in aerial communication relay. Autonomous Robots, 26(1) pp. 21-32. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Winkler, L., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2008) Ant-based Swarming with Positionless Micro Air Vehicles for Communication Relay. Swarm Intelligence, 2(2-4) pp. 167-188. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Conference Papers

Hauert, S., Leven, S., Varga, M., Ruini, F., and Cangelosi, A. et al. (2011) Reynolds flocking in reality with fixed-wing robots: communication range vs. maximum turning rate. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'2011)

Hauert, S., Leven, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2010) Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots. Proceedings of the Workshop on Network Science and Systems Issues in Multi-Robot Autonomy, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. [detailed record] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Leven, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2010) Communication-based Leashing of Real Flying Robots. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 15-20. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2009) Reverse-engineering of Artificially Evolved Controllers for Swarms of Robots. Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, pp. 55-61. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Floreano, D., Hauert, S., Leven, S. and Zufferey, J.-C. (2007) Evolutionary Swarms of Flying Robots. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Book Chapters

Zufferey, J.-C., Hauert, S., Stirling, T., Leven, S., Roberts, J. and Floreano, D. (2011) Aerial collective systems. in Handbook of Collective Robotics, Pan Stanford, 2011. [detailed record] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Mitri, S., Keller, L. and Floreano, D. (2010) Evolving Cooperation: From Biology to Engineering. in The Horizons of Evolutionary Robotics, Cambridge, USA : MIT Press, 2010. [detailed record] [bibtex]

Posters

Hauert, S., Leven, S., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2010) Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots. Presented at: International Workshop on Self-Organized Systems, Zürich, Switzerland, December 9-11. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]

Hauert, S., Winkler, L., Zufferey, J.-C. and Floreano, D. (2007) Pheromone-based Swarming for Position-less MAVs. Presented at: Flying Insects and Robots Symposium, Monte-Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, 12-17 August. [detailed record] [pdf] [bibtex]