PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Henny Admoni

Henny Admoni is a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University whose autonomous assistive robots detect, interpret and respond to human verbal and nonverbal behavior, including eye gaze. Her 2015 Yale dissertation, completed with Brian Scassellati, covered nonverbal communication in socially assistive human-robot interaction, and she went on to a postdoctoral position in Siddhartha Srinivasa's Personal Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon. She joined the Robotics Institute as an assistant professor in 2017, received an NSF CAREER Award in 2020 for work on gaze-aware robots that help people with motor impairments, and was named the Habermann Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute in 2021. In 2024 she coauthored a large-language-model speech interface for a feeding robot, and from 2024 to 2025 she was a scholar in residence at Stockholm's Digital Futures research center, working on safe human-robot interaction. As an associate professor, she leads the Human And Robot Partners (HARP) Lab.

Timeline

  1. 2015

    Yale PhD and CMU postdoc

    She completes her PhD in computer science at Yale with Brian Scassellati in the Social Robotics Lab, defending the dissertation "Nonverbal Communication in Socially Assistive Human-Robot Interaction" in November 2015. She then moves to Siddhartha Srinivasa's Personal Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon as a postdoctoral associate.

  2. 2017

    Assistant professor at CMU

    In 2017, she joins Carnegie Mellon as an assistant professor in the Robotics Institute and leads the Human And Robot Partners (HARP) Lab. The lab studies human-robot interaction and designs models of human mental states, like intentions, so robots can better understand them.

  3. January 2020

    Human-robot interaction at Davos

    In January 2020, she presents "The Future of Human-Robot Interaction" at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The talk describes how cognitive psychology, machine learning and robotics are creating the next generation of collaborative machines.

  4. April 2020

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In April 2020, she receives a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a five-year, $550,000 grant for robotic assistive technologies. The project studies how eye gaze reveals when and how people need help in daily activities, and tests gaze-driven assistance algorithms with users who have upper motor impairments.

  5. 2021

    A Habermann endowed professorship

    In 2021, she is named the A. Nico Habermann Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute, one of eight Career Development Chairs awarded across Carnegie Mellon.

  6. September 2024–August 2025

    Scholar in residence at KTH

    From September 2024 to August 2025, she is a scholar in residence at Stockholm's Digital Futures research center. She works with KTH researchers in the Division of Perception, Robotics, and Learning on methods that draw on AI, software engineering and formal methods to ensure safety in human-robot interaction.

  7. October 2024

    A speech interface for feeding robots

    In October 2024, she coauthors "Towards an LLM-Based Speech Interface for Robot-Assisted Feeding" with Zackory Erickson, Carmel Majidi and others. The system gives a commercially available assistive feeding robot an LLM-based speech interface and is evaluated in a user study with 11 older adults at an independent living facility.

  8. As of October 2026

    Leading the HARP Lab

    As of October 2026, she is an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and leads the HARP Lab, whose algorithms enable robots to detect, interpret and respond to human verbal and nonverbal behavior. In December 2025, she gives the Cornell computer science colloquium "Bidirectional Understanding in Human-Robot Interactions," on how people interpret the behavior of AI agents and how agents can interpret people.

Career

  1. Since 2015Carnegie Mellon UniversityPostdoctoral Associate, Assistant Professor
  2. 2024–2025Digital Futures research centerScholar in Residence

Education

  1. 2015Yale UniversityPhD

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Henny Admoni yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Henny Admoni successfully defends her thesis | Social Robotics Lab scazlab.yale.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Bio & CV | Henny Admoni hennyadmoni.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Henny Admoni, Fei Fang Honored With Endowed Professorships cs.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Toward Natural Interactions With Assistive Robots - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Shaping the Future of Human-Robot Interaction at Davos - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Delegates and Awardees - World Economic Forum - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Admoni Earns NSF CAREER Award - News - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Henny Admoni | Digital Futures digitalfutures.kth.se. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. [2410.20624] Towards an LLM-Based Speech Interface for Robot-Assisted Feeding arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Bidirectional Understanding in Human-Robot Interactions | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Henny Admoni - The Robotics Institute - CMU ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.