PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Matthew Gombolay

Matthew Gombolay is a robotics and machine learning researcher whose work on human-robot interaction, explainable AI and multi-agent reinforcement learning aims to let robots learn from people and work alongside them. After a B.S. at Johns Hopkins in 2011, he completed a Ph.D. in autonomous systems at MIT in 2017, and his 2016 apprenticeship scheduling work taught a robot to recommend nurse and room assignments on a hospital labor ward. In 2018, he received an R&D 100 Award for moving that research from MIT Lincoln Laboratory to the United States Navy and was named the Anne and Alan Taetle Early-career Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. A paper of his won the Best Paper Award for technical advances at HRI'22, and in 2024 he received an NSF CAREER Award and was promoted to associate professor with tenure. Gombolay is an associate professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech and directs its CORE Robotics Lab.

Timeline

  1. 2011–2017

    Johns Hopkins and MIT degrees

    He earns a B.S. in mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins in 2011, an S.M. in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT in 2013, and a Ph.D. in autonomous systems at MIT in 2017.

  2. 2016

    Apprenticeship scheduling on a labor ward

    As an MIT PhD student, he co-writes two papers with MIT professor Julie Shah and others from CSAIL on a robot that learns scheduling from human workers. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the robot recommends room and nurse assignments on a labor ward, and in a missile-defense game built by Lincoln Laboratory researchers it occasionally outperforms human experts.

  3. 2018

    An R&D 100 Award

    Between his dissertation and his move to Georgia Tech, he serves as technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and transitions his research to the United States Navy. He and Sung-Hyun Son receive an R&D 100 Award in 2018 for translating his machine learning research into intelligent decision support for the Navy. His 2018 paper "Human-Machine Collaborative Optimization via Apprenticeship Scheduling", written with Julie Shah and others, shows that policies learned from human scheduling demonstrations improve the efficiency of branch-and-bound search, and that the technique generates solutions at a rate up to 9.5 times faster than an optimization approach.

  4. 2018

    Taetle professor at Georgia Tech

    He joins the Georgia Tech faculty from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and is named the Anne and Alan Taetle Early-career Assistant Professor in 2018.

  5. 2018–2019

    DARPA Riser and NASA fellowship

    He is selected as a DARPA Riser in October 2018. In September 2019, he receives a NASA Early Career Fellowship for increasing science autonomy in space.

  6. 2022

    Best paper at HRI 2022

    In March 2022, his paper "MIND MELD: Personalized Meta-Learning for Robot-Centric Imitation Learning" wins the Best Paper Award for technical advances at the ACM/IEEE Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

  7. 2024

    NSF CAREER Award and tenure

    In February 2024, he receives an NSF CAREER Award for research on assistive robots for older adults, with nearly $600,000 to collect a large data set on how older adults interact with them. The CORE Robotics Lab celebrates his promotion to associate professor with tenure in March 2024.

  8. As of October 2026

    Directing the CORE Robotics Lab

    He is an associate professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech and directs the CORE Robotics Lab, whose topics include explainable AI, human-robot interaction, deep and multi-agent reinforcement learning, graph neural networks and natural language processing. The lab supports the AI-CARING institute with robot programming by demonstration that care partners can use to assist with daily activities. He is an associate editor of Autonomous Robots and the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction.

Career

  1. Since 2018Georgia Institute of TechnologyAnne and Alan Taetle Early-career Assistant Professor
  2. Until 2018Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyTechnical Staff

Education

  1. 2017Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPh.D.
  2. 2013Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyS.M.
  3. 2011Johns Hopkins UniversityB.S.

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Matthew Gombolay. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. 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.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Matthew Gombolay core-robotics.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Robot helps nurses schedule tasks on labor floor | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology news.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Awards – Matthew Gombolay sites.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [1805.04220] Human-Machine Collaborative Optimization via Apprenticeship Scheduling arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Matthew Gombolay | School of Interactive Computing ic.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. mgombolay3 | College of Computing cc.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. NSF Award to Launch Study of How Older Adults Interact With Robots | School of Interactive Computing ic.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. CORE Robotics Lab core-robotics.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Matthew Gombolay – Associate Professor Matthew Gombolay sites.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Matthew Gombolay | AI Caring ai-caring.org. Checked 21 October 2026.