About

Alyssa Pierson is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. Her research interests include trust and cooperation in multi-agent systems, distributed robotics control, and socially-compliant autonomous system design. She focuses on designing robotic systems that interact with humans and other robots in complex, dynamic environments.

Prior to joining BU, Professor Pierson was a research scientist with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. She received her PhD degree from Boston University in 2017 and BS in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College. During her PhD, she was awarded the Clare Booth Luce Fellowship. She was a Best Paper Finalist at the 2016 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, an Honorable Mention for the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, a recipient of an NSF CAREER award in 2023, and recipient of the MassRobotics Rising Star Award in 2023.