Manuela Maria Veloso (born August 12, 1957) is a Portuguese-American computer scientist and roboticist. She is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and serves as the Head of AI Research at J.P. Morgan. Veloso is widely recognized for her contributions to Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, and robotics, particularly in the areas of multi-agent systems and autonomous service robots.
Veloso has held leadership roles in major AI organizations. She served as president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) until 2014 and is a co-founder and past president of the RoboCup Federation, an international initiative promoting robotics and AI through soccer competitions. She has also been a program chair for major conferences, including the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) and AAAI.
Education and Early Career
Veloso earned her Licenciatura (1980) and Master of Science (1984) degrees in electrical engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to the United States, obtaining a Master of Arts in computer science from Boston University in 1986. In 1992, she completed her Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, where her thesis, "Learning by Analogical Reasoning in General Purpose Problem Solving," was supervised by Jaime Carbonell.
After her Ph.D., Veloso joined the faculty of the CMU School of Computer Science as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 1997 and to full professor in 2002. During her career, she held visiting positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999–2000), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2006–2007), and the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University (2013–2014).
Research and Robotics
Veloso's research focuses on the effective construction of autonomous agents that combine cognition, perception, and action to address planning, execution, and learning tasks. She and her students have developed a variety of autonomous robots, including teams of soccer robots that have won the RoboCup world championship multiple times. They also created the CoBot robots, which have autonomously navigated more than 1,000 kilometers in university buildings, performing tasks such as delivering items and escorting visitors.
Her work has been influential in advancing Deep learning and Neural network applications in robotics, and she has contributed to the broader field of Generative AI through her leadership and research. Veloso has also been a vocal advocate for the ethical development of AI, emphasizing the responsibility of researchers to ensure that autonomous systems benefit humanity.
Honors and Awards
Veloso has received numerous accolades for her contributions. In 1995, she received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. She was named an AAAI Fellow in 2003, an IEEE Fellow in 2010, and an AAAS Fellow in 2010. In 2009, she received the ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award. She was also a Radcliffe Fellow in 2006–2007 and held the Einstein Chair at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012. In 2016, she was named an ACM Fellow for her contributions to artificial intelligence, particularly in planning, learning, multi-agent systems, and robotics.
Veloso is also featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards, a project highlighting the achievements of women in the field. As of 2015, she had graduated 32 Ph.D. students, many of whom have gone on to prominent academic and industry positions.
References
This article is based on publicly available information about Manuela Veloso's career and achievements.