Links: Long CV
Brief Biography
Harold Soh is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore, where he leads the Collaborative Learning and Adaptive Robots (CLeAR) group. He completed his Ph.D. at Imperial College London, focusing on online learning for assistive robots.
Harold’s research primarily involves machine learning, particularly generative AI, and decision-making in trustworthy collaborative robots. His contributions have been recognized with a R:SS Early Career Spotlight in 2023, best paper awards at IROS’21 and T-AFFC’21, and several nominations (R:SS’18, HRI’18, RecSys’18, IROS’12). Harold has played significant roles in the HRI community, most recently as co-Program Chair of ACM/IEEE HRI’24. He is an Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Human Robot Interaction, Robotics Automation and Letters (RA-L), and the International Journal on Robotics Research (IJRR). He is a Principal Investigator at the Smart Systems Institute and a co-founder of TacnIQ, a startup developing touch-enabled intelligence.
Harold lives in Singapore with his wife and two lovely children. In his precious free time, he enjoys reading science fiction with a glass of wine.
Awards:
Year | Award | Comment |
---|---|---|
2024 | Annual Teaching Excellence Award (ATEA) and Honor Roll | University Level Teaching Award |
2023 | Early Career Spotlight | Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS) 2023 |
2022 | Best of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (T-AFFC) 2021 Award | Applying Probabilistic Programming to Affective Computing |
2021 | Annual Teaching Excellence Award (ATEA) | University Level Teaching Award |
2021 | IEEE/RSJ IROS Best Paper Award | Extended Tactile Perception: Vibration Sensing through Tools and Grasped Objects |
2020 | Annual Teaching Excellence Award (ATEA) | University Level Teaching Award |
2020 | Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (FTEA) | School of Computing, NUS |
2019 | Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (FTEA) | School of Computing, NUS |
2018 | RSS Best Paper Award Finalist | The Transfer of Human Trust in Robot Capabilities across Tasks |
2018 | ACM/IEEE HRI Best Paper Award Finalist | Planning with Trust for Human Robot Collaboration |
2018 | ACM RecSys Best Long Paper Award Runner-up | Generation Meets Recommendation: Proposing Novel Items for Groups of Users |
2018 | Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (FTEA) | |
2014-2016 | SMART Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship Award | Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology |
2012-2013 | Design London Fellow | Imperial-RCA Fellowships |
2012 | James Dyson National Award Finalist (UK) | Assistive Robotic Transport for Youngsters (ARTY) |
2012 | IEEE/RSJ IROS Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Finalist | Online Spatio-Temporal Gaussian Process Experts with Application to Tactile Classification |
2009-2013 | Khazanah Global Scholarship | Khazanah Foundation Malaysia |
2000-2004 | Regents Scholarship | University of California, Davis |
Selected Invited Talks
- Invited Speaker, Microsoft Research Asia ACE Seminar.
- Invited Speaker, R:SS Workshop on Safety and Normative Behaviors in Human-Robot Interaction.
- Keynote, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024.
- Invited Speaker, Future of Robotics Debates, ICRA 2024.
- Invited Speaker, Towards Collaborative Partners: Design, Shared Control, and Robot Learning for Physical HRI, ICRA 2024 Workshop
- Invited Speaker, ICRA Workshop on Communicating Robot Learning in Human-Robot Interaction, 2023.
- Invited Speaker, ICRA Workshop on Assistive Manipulation, 2023
- Invited Speaker, HRI Workshop on Advancing HRI Research and Benchmarking through Open-Source Ecosystems, 2023.
- Invited Panelist, HRI Pioneers 2023.
- Invited Speaker, NeurIPS Workshop on Progress and Challenges in Building Trustworthy Embodied AI, 2022.
- Invited Speaker, Towards Trustworthy Robots that Interact with People, GRASP Fall Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, 2022.
- Invited Panelist, Principles and understanding of RL algorithms and models, IROS RL-CONFORM workshop, 2022
- Invited Speaker, Workshop on Human Theory of Machines and Machine Theory of Mind for Human Agent Teams, IROS 2022.
- Invited Speaker, Workshop on Close Proximity Human-Robot Collaboration Challenges & Opportunities, R:SS 2022.
- Invited Speaker, Center for Robotics and Neural Systems (CRNS), University of Plymouth, 2022
- Invited Speaker, Trust and Touch for HRI, QUT Centre for Robotics, Australia, Feb 2022.
- Invited Speaker, Trust, Touch, and Talk for HRI, University of Southern California (USC), USA, Oct 2021.
- Invited Speaker, Event-based Learning and Perception, 2021 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop.
- Invited Speaker, Learning and Perception with Event-Based Tactile Sensors, ICRA 2021 VITAC Workshop.
- Invited Speaker, Trust in Human Robot Collaboration, RSS 2020 Workshop on Emergent Behaviors in Human-Robot Systems.
- Invited Speaker, Human Robot Trust, AI & Robotics Global Conference 2019 / The Robot Of The Year 2019.
Selected Press and Interviews
- Neuromorphic Touch Perception, CNA938 Interview, Aug 2020
- BBC Tech Tent Podcast, July 2020
- Why It Matters, (Art)ificial Intelligence, Channel News Asia (CNA).
- A Smart, Safe Wheelchair for Kids Who Can’t Walk, MIT Tech Review, Sept 2012