Chelsea Finn

Chelsea Finn is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and the William George and Ida Mary Hoover Faculty Fellow. She leads the IRIS Lab, which studies intelligence through large-scale robotic interaction and learning, with affiliations to SAIL and Stanford’s Machine Learning Group. Finn’s research investigates how robots and other embodied agents can acquire broadly intelligent behavior through experience, drawing on advances in deep reinforcement learning, meta-learning, multimodal perception, and large-scale autonomous data collection. Her work spans end-to-end robotic learning, rapid adaptation to new tasks, and systems that bridge simulation and real-world interaction. Finn received her PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and her BS in EECS from MIT, with prior research experience at Google Brain. Her contributions have been recognized with honors such as the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and Sloan Fellowship. She is also active in broadening participation in AI and robotics through mentoring and outreach initiatives.