Chelsea Finn is an American computer scientist and assistant professor at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Her research investigates intelligence through the interactions of robots, with the hope to create robotic systems that can learn how to learn. She is part of the

Google Brain Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research ...

group.

Early life and education

Finn was an undergraduate student in electrical engineering at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. She moved to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, where she studied gradient based algorithms in the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab (BAIR). Such algorithms allow machines to 'learn to learn', more akin to human learning than traditional machine learning systems. These “meta-learning” techniques train machines to quickly adapt, such that when they encounter new scenarios they can learn quickly. As a doctoral student she worked as an intern at

, where she worked on robot learning algorithms from deep predictive models. She delivered a

massive open online course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, m ...

deep reinforcement learning Deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) is a subfield of machine learning that combines reinforcement learning (RL) and deep learning. RL considers the problem of a computational agent learning to make decisions by trial and error. Deep RL incorpor ...

. She was the first woman to win the C.V. & Daulat Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award.

Research and career

Finn investigates the capabilities of robots to develop intelligence through learning and interaction. She has made use of

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

algorithms to simultaneously learn visual perception and control robotic skills. She developed meta-learning approaches to train neural networks to take in student code and output useful feedback. She showed that the system could quickly adapt without too much input from the instructor. She trialled the programme on Code in Place, a 12,000 student course delivered by

every year. She found that 97.9% of the time the students agreed with the feedback being given.

Awards and honors

* 2016 C.V. & Daulat Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award * 2017

Electrical engineering and computer science Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is an academic program at many universities which comprises scientific and engineering aspects of computing. CSE is also a term often used in Europe to translate the name of engineering informatics academic ...

rising star * 2018

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

35 Under 35 * 2018

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to the authors of the best doctoral dissertations in computer science and computer engineering. The award is accompanied by a prize of US $20,000 ...

* 2020

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

AI Researcher of the Year * 2020

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Rising Star Faculty Award * 2021

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

Young Investigator Award * 2022

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award

Select publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finn, Chelsea Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Stanford University faculty American computer scientists American women scientists Machine learning researchers Year of birth missing (living people)