PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hanna Kurniawati

Hanna Kurniawati is a roboticist who studies robot motion planning and decision-making under uncertainty. She earned a computer science degree at the University of Indonesia in 2001 and completed a PhD at the National University of Singapore in 2008 under David Hsu. She moved to the Australian National University in 2019 and is now a Professor and SmartSat CRC Chair; the SARSOP POMDP paper she coauthored received the 2021 RSS Test of Time Award. Her 2025 work includes an online approximate POMDP solver.

Timeline

  1. 2001–2008

    Computer science degrees

    She earns a computer science degree at the University of Indonesia in 2001 and completes a PhD in computer science at the National University of Singapore in 2008 under David Hsu, focused on robot motion planning.

  2. 2008–2012

    Postdoctoral research and Queensland

    After completing her PhD in 2008, she briefly works as a Research Fellow with David Hsu and Lee Wee Sun at NUS, then works with Nicholas Patrikalakis as a Postdoctoral Associate before becoming a Research Scientist at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. She joins the University of Queensland School of ITEE in 2012.

  3. 2015

    ICAPS student paper award

    In 2015, she coauthors In-silico Behavior Discovery System: An Application of Planning in Ethology, which wins ICAPS’s Outstanding Student Paper Award.

  4. 2019

    Senior Lecturer at ANU

    She moves to ANU in 2019 as a tenured Senior Lecturer with the CS Futures Fellowship.

  5. 2021

    The SARSOP test of time

    She shares the 2021 RSS Test of Time Award with David Hsu and Wee Sun Lee for their 2008 SARSOP paper on efficient point-based POMDP planning.

  6. 2023

    SmartSat CRC Chair

    She is appointed the SmartSat CRC Professorial Chair for System Autonomy, Intelligence, and Decision Making in 2023 and becomes a Full Professor at ANU.

  7. 2025

    Online POMDP research

    In 2025, she coauthors Partially Observable Reference Policy Programming with Edward Kim, an anytime online approximate POMDP solver that samples future histories and updates its policy gradually.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and SmartSat Chair

    As of October 2026, she is a Professor at the ANU School of Computing and holds the SmartSat CRC Professorial Chair for System Autonomy, Intelligence, and Decision Making.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Robot co-pilots to make helicopter rescue faster, safer comp.anu.edu.au. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Hanna Kurniawati | ANU School of Computing comp.anu.edu.au. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Publications | Robust Decision-making & Learning Lab rdllab.github.io. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. NUS Computing professors win Robotics Science and Systems Test of Time Award 2021 comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Test of Time Award | Robotics: Science and Systems roboticsconference.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. News | Robust Decision-making & Learning Lab rdllab.github.io. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Partially Observable Reference Policy Programming: Solving POMDPs Sans Numerical Optimisation arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.