Simon Stepputtis

About

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science, where I lead the Thinking Embodied Agents (TEA) Lab. In my research, I aim to create intelligent robots and AI systems that are capable of seamlessly integrating with human environments and tasks. In the TEA Lab, we study how robots acquire and retain skills over their lifetime in unstructured environments, and how they coordinate with the people working alongside them. To this end, we develop robotics foundation models in combination with symbolic reasoning and planning, allowing our systems to learn behaviors efficiently and adapt to new environments.

Before joining Virginia Tech, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Scientist at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, where I worked with Prof. Katia Sycara on efficient human-agent teaming. I earned my Ph.D. from Arizona State University under Prof. Heni Ben Amor in the Interactive Robotics Lab, where I specialized in physical human-robot interaction.

Experience

  • Assistant Professor (2025 - Present)

    • Virginia Tech
    • I lead the Thinking Embodied Agents (TEA) Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow / Project Scientist (2022 - 2025)

  • Resident @ Google X (May to October 2021)

    • X, The Moonshot Factory
    • As a resident, I worked on industrial manipulation tasks for Intrinsic, a robotics software and AI project at Google X.

  • Robotics Intern (Summer 2018)

    • Robert Bosch LLC
    • During my internship, I segmented time series data into semantic sections and validated user behaviors based on usage patterns and global goal constraints.

Education

  • Ph.D. Computer Science (2017 - 2021)

    • Arizona State University, USA
    • Thesis: Multimodal Robot Learning for Grasping and Manipulation

  • M.Sc. Engineering & Computing (2015 - 2016)

    • TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany
    • Thesis: A data-driven approach for triadic interactions in human-robot interaction

  • B.Sc. Engineering & Computing (2011 - 2015)

    • TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany
    • Thesis: Upper body tracking for avatar visualization in HMD-based virtual reality

Awards

  • Best Workshop Paper Award (2025)

    • Generative Models x HRI Workshop at RSS 2025

  • Best Workshop Paper Award (2025)

    • Workshop on Nonverbal Cues for Human-Robot Cooperative Intelligence at ICRA 2025

  • Best Poster Award (2019)

    • Southwest Robotics Symposium, awarded by NVIDIA

  • CIDSE Doctoral Fellowship (2017 - 2021)

    • Awarded annually by Arizona State University’s School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering

  • Best Video Award (2016)

    • IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

Service

  • Co-Chair, Pathways @ RSS (2025)

    • Organized fellowships and mentorship for students starting a career in robotics.

  • Advising Faculty, RSS Pioneers (2025)

    • Previously a member of the program committee in 2023.

  • Workshop Organizer (2023)

    • Articulate Robots: Utilizing Language for Robot Learning at RSS 2023

  • Workshop Organizer (2022)

    • Human Theory of Machines and Machine Theory of Mind for Human-Agent Teams at IROS 2022

  • Reviewing

    • Outstanding Reviewer at CVPR, as well as reviewing for NeurIPS, ICLR, RSS, ICRA, IROS, HRI, T-RO, and RA-L.