Laura Herlant

Laura Herlant is a research lead specializing in foundation models at RAI Institute, where employment began in November 2022. Prior to this role, Laura served as a senior manager of enterprise data science, manager of reinforcement learning, and senior robotics research scientist at iRobot from May 2018 to November 2022. Laura's academic background includes a Ph.D. and M.S. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, where research focused on developing algorithms for robots to interact closely with humans, including creating a wheelchair-based robotic arm to assist individuals with disabilities. Additional education includes a master-level exchange program in Robotics and Embedded Systems at ENSTA and a B.E. in Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.