I received my Ph.D. from University of Washington. Here is my thesis talk.

My research in graduate school was on human-robot interaction. I particularly enjoyed thinking about programming systems for robots in human environments; I drew inspirations from programming languages, web development, product design, and startup communities.

Media Coverage & Talks

1. Lessons Learned from Deploying Robotics SW in Fast-Paced Startups, KAIST CDSN Lab Seminar, 2025
2. Designing a Robot-based Customer Feedback Gathering Service for Hospitality Industry ... and what are the HRI community’s recommendations on designing robotic services?, HRI-LSI Workshop Invited Talk, 2022
3. Talking Robotics #1 - Michael Jae Yoon Chung, Talking Robotics, 2020
4. Enabling End-Users to Create Interactive Real-World Robot Applications through Novel Interfaces and Automation, UW CSE Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Talks, 2020
5. Reactive Programming for Robot Applications, ROS Seattle Meetup, 2019
6. Probabilistic Models for Human-Robot Interaction and Robotic Learning, ONR Science of Autonomy Meeting, 2015
7. Ask the crowd: Robots learn faster, better with online helpers, UW Today, 2014
8. Mind-Controlled Robot Uses Human Brainwaves, Discovery News, 2010

Workshop Papers and Posters

1. SOBORO: A Social Robot Behavior Authoring Language,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and Maya Cakmak
   In PD/EUP Workshop, HRI 2022 Workshop, 2022
   [slides]
2. Authoring Human Simulators via Probabilistic Functional Reactive Program Synthesis,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and Maya Cakmak
   In ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Extended Abstracts, 2022
   [slides]
3. Collecting Insights into How Novice Programmers Naturally Express Programs for Robots,
   Rajeswari Hita Kambhamettu, Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Vinitha Ranganeni and Patrícia Alves-Oliveira
   In PLATEAU 2021 Workshop, 2021
   
4. Exploring the Use of Robots for Gathering Customer Feedback in the Hospitality Industry,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and Maya Cakmak
   In Social Robots in the Wild, HRI 2018 Workshop, 2018
   
5. Iterative Design of a System for Programming Socially Interactive Service Robots,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Justin Huang, Leila Takayama and Maya Cakmak
   In Perspectives on Analysis and Design of Human-Centered Robotics, IROS 2016 Workshop, 2016
   
6. Exploring the Potential of Information Gathering Robots,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Andrzej Pronobis, Maya Cakmak, Dieter Fox and Rajesh PN Rao
   In ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Extended Abstracts, 2015
   [poster]
7. Assistive Robot Control Using the Vocal Joystick,
   Mike Chung, Eric Rombokas, Yoky Matsuoka, Jeff Bilmes and Maya Cakmak
   In Pioneers Workshop, HRI 2014 Workshop, 2014
   
8. Grounding antonym adjective pairs through interaction,
   Maxwell Forbes, Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Maya Cakmak, Luke Zettlemoyer and Rajesh PN Rao
   In Humans and Robots in Asymmetric Interactions, HRI 2014 Workshop, 2014
   
9. Towards Hierarchical BCIs: Combining Motor Imagery and Evoked Potentials for Robotic Control,
   Mike Chung, Reinhold Scherer, Jonathan Lyon, W Cheung and Rajesh PN Rao
   In International Brain-Computer Interface Conference Poster, 2010
   

Conference Papers

1. ConCodeIt! A Comparison of Concurrency Interfaces in Block-based Visual Robot Programming,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Mino Nakura, Sai Harshita Neti, Anthony Lu, Elana Hummel and Maya Cakmak
   In IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2020
   
2. Iterative Repair of Social Robot Programs from Implicit User Feedback via Bayesian Inference,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and Maya Cakmak
   In Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2020
   [video] [details]
3. "How was your stay?": Exploring the Use of Robots for Gathering Customer Feedback in the Hospitality Industry,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung and Maya Cakmak
   In IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2018
   [slides] [supp.]
4. Iterative Design of a System for Programming Socially Interactive Service Robots,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Justin Huang, Leila Takayama, Tessa Lau and Maya Cakmak
   In International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR), 2016
   [slides]
5. Autonomous question answering with mobile robots in human-populated environments,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Andrzej Pronobis, Maya Cakmak, Dieter Fox and Rajesh PN Rao
   In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016
   [poster] [tech.report]
6. A Bayesian Developmental Approach to Robotic Goal-Based Imitation Learning,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Abram L Friesen, Dieter Fox, Andrew N Meltzoff and Rajesh PN Rao
   In PloS one, 2015
   [tech.report]
7. Designing Information Gathering Robots for Human-Populated Environments,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Andrzej Pronobis, Maya Cakmak, Dieter Fox and Rajesh PN Rao
   In IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015
   [slides]
8. Accelerating imitation learning through crowdsourcing,
   Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Maxwell Forbes, Maya Cakmak and Rajesh PN Rao
   In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014
   [slides] [video] [details]
9. Robot programming by demonstration with crowdsourced action fixes,
   Maxwell Forbes, Michael Jae-Yoon Chung, Maya Cakmak and Rajesh PN Rao
   In AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP), 2014
   
10. Structured learning of Gaussian graphical models,
    Karthik Mohan, Mike Chung, Seungyeop Han, Daniela Witten, Su-In Lee and Maryam Fazel
    In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2012
    [poster]
11. Automatic extraction of command hierarchies for adaptive brain-robot interfacing,
    Matthew Bryan, Griffin Nicoll, Vibinash Thomas, Mike Chung, Joshua R Smith and Rajesh PN Rao
    In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012
    [slides]
12. Continuous vocalization control of a full-scale assistive robot,
    Mike Chung, Eric Rombokas, Qi An, Yasutaka Matsuoka and Jeff Bilmes
    In IEEE-RAS & EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2012
    [poster] [video]
13. An adaptive brain-computer interface for humanoid robot control,
    Matthew Bryan, Joshua Green, Mike Chung, Lillian Chang, Reinhold Scherer, Joshua Smith and Rajesh PN Rao
    In IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2011
    [poster]
14. Interactive hierarchical brain-computer interfacing: Uncertainty-based interaction between humans and robots,
    Mike Chung, Matthew Bryan, Willy Cheung, Reinhold Scherer and Rajesh PN Rao
    In International Brain-Computer Interface Conference, 2011
    [poster]
15. A hierarchical architecture for adaptive brain-computer interfacing,
    Mike Chung, Willy Cheung, Reinhold Scherer and Rajesh PN Rao
    In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2011
    [poster]
16. Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces: enhanced gaming and robotic control,
    Reinhold Scherer, Elisabeth CV Friedrich, Brendan Allison, Markus Pröll, Mike Chung, Willy Cheung, Rajesh PN Rao and Christa Neuper
    In International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN), 2011
    
17. Towards hierarchical BCIs for robotic control,
    Mike Chung, Willy Cheung, Reinhold Scherer and Rajesh PN Rao
    In International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering (NER), 2011
    
18. Interaction With Virtual And Augmented Reality Environments Using Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interfacing,
    Reinhold Scherer, Mike Chung, Johnathan Lyon, Willy Cheung and Rajesh PN Rao
    In International Conference on Applied Bionics and Biomechanics, 2010