resume

Ph.D.

Arizona State University

Computer Science

• Working with: Yu "Tony" Zhang, Stephen West, Heni Ben Amor
• 🏆 Jumpstart Research Grant
• 🏆 Teaching Excellence Award (2025)

Master of Informatics

Kyoto University

Social Informatics

• Advisors: Dražen Brščić, Takayuki Kanda
• 🏆 Distinguished Master's Thesis Award
• 🏆 MEXT Research Scholarship (Japanese Gov.)

Bachelor of Engineering

NED University of Engineering and Technology

Electronic Engineering

• 🏆 Academic Rank 5 out of 148

Active Shadowing (ASD): Manipulating Perception of Robotic Behaviors via Implicit Virtual Communication

Andrew Boateng, Prakhar Bhartiya, Taha Shaheen, Yu Zhang. arXiv preprint.

arXiv:2407.01468

Assigning Multi-Robot Tasks to Multitasking Robots

Winston Smith, Andrew Boateng, Taha Shaheen, and Yu Zhang. arXiv preprint.

arXiv:2506.15032

Investigation of Low-Moral Actions by Malicious Anonymous Operators of Avatar Robots

Taha Shaheen, Dražen Brščić, and Takayuki Kanda. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction.

doi.org/10.1145/3696466

Southwest Robotics Symposium

Tempe, AZ, USA

Presented poster on the Low-moral Actions of Malicious Anonymous Operators of Avatar Robots.

3rd Symbiotic Society with Avatars (SSA) workshop at HRI

Boulder, CO, USA

Presented poster on the Low-moral Actions of Malicious Anonymous Operators of Avatar Robots.

Workshop on 'Avatar-Symbiotic Society' at ICRA

London, UK

Presented poster on the Low-moral Actions of Malicious Anonymous Operators of Avatar Robots.

The 2nd Avatar Symbiotic Society Conference

Osaka, Japan

Presented poster on my Masters research on the Low-moral Actions of Malicious Anonymous Operators of Avatar Robots.

Graduate Teaching Associate

School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, ASU

Courses including Mobile Computing (CSE 535), Information Assurance (CSE 543), Assembly Language (CSE 230), and 486 (Capstone). Delivered lectures, designed projects, hosted office hours, and assisted students with course material.

• Teaching Excellence Award (2025)

Graduate Student Researcher

Cooperative Robotic Systems Lab, Arizona State University

• Engineered a full-stack data collection platform (Python, Flask, JS) for a large-scale HRI study, successfully collecting over 2,550 unique trajectories from 140+ participants in a custom grid-world environment.
• Designed and executing a 16-condition study, examining the impact of perturbed user beliefs on feedback quality in reward learning for robots, in collaboration with ASU's most-cited researcher, Dr. Stephen G. West.
• Accelerated the development cycle by an estimated 30-40% through AI-assisted rapid prototyping and deployed an automated pipeline for data collection and processing, minimizing manual intervention.

Graduate Researcher

Human-Robot Interaction Lab, Kyoto University

• Devised a novel role-playing study to explore adversarial behaviors yielding key insights for future robotic ethics frameworks where 12 participants used both a physical robot and a crowded simulation to act as malicious operators and victims.
• Identified and cataloged 15 unique “low-moral” actions (e.g., privacy violation, harassment), and developed a framework of technical and social countermeasures to prevent them.
• Authored the resulting taxonomy and prevention framework, culminating in a first-author publication in the journal ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction.

Research Assistant

National Center for Artificial Intelligence, NED University

• Engineered 2 socially assistive robots from concept to deployment for a target cost under $200 USD, developing the full software/hardware stack in Unity (C#), Android (Java), and Arduino (C++).
• Drove 3 major robot iterations by incorporating insights from a 3-month field study and targeted feedback from 15 key stakeholders (therapists and parents).
• Mentored 12 undergraduate students across 3 capstone teams on robotics projects for autism therapy, leading all 3 teams to successfully develop and validate novel therapeutic robot prototypes.

Graduate Trainee Engineer, Instrumentation and Control

Fatima Fertilizer Company

• Managed day-to-day maintenance jobs at Offsites & Utilities and Nitric Acid plants.
• Completed training in field instrumentation, Bently Nevada vibration monitoring, anti-surge control, DCS/ESD systems, and process safety management.
• Supervised the training of interns and junior trainee engineers.

Active Shadowing (ASD) for Implicit HRI Communication

• Contributed to the development of Active Shadowing, a novel system using Augmented Reality shadows to enhance robot collaboration without sacrificing motion optimality.
• Developed the core robot control software, precisely choreographing a UR5 arm's movements to seamlessly integrate with a predictive Augmented Reality shadow projected via a HoloLens.
• Co-designed the 23-participant user study that validated the system, proving via t-test (p<0.05) that the AR shadow improved human-robot safety scores by over 50% compared to explicit communication.

LLM as a Model Optimizer in Model Predictive Control

• Proved that an LLM can function as a real-time model optimizer for an MPC system, successfully adapting the controller parameters online to stabilize a dynamic inverted pendulum simulation.
• Engineered a physical testbed for hardware validation by designing and 3D-printing a custom pendulum and integrating it with a UR5 robotic arm.

Office Reception Robot

• Engineered the robot's perception and interaction systems, integrating a Python-based computer vision module for facial recognition and Google Dialogflow for natural language understanding (NLU).
• Built the full-stack architecture, including a Python back-end and 3 custom Android front-ends, to successfully automate 3 core office tasks (guest registration, package delivery, and meeting scheduling).

Assistive Social Robot (Capstone Project)

• Designed, built, and deployed a social robot from the ground up, developing the full stack using Unity (C#), Android (Java), and Arduino (C++).
• The project's success and technical novelty directly led to securing a $26,000 grant from Pakistan's Higher Education Commission (TDF-02145), which funded its continuation as a formal research position.

Teaching Excellence Award

Arizona State University

Recognizes graduate teaching associates who have demonstrated exceptional teaching ability and dedication to student success.

Jumpstart Research Grant

Arizona State University

A competitive internal grant awarded to new Ph.D. students to help initiate their research and scholarly activities.

Distinguished Master's Thesis Award

Kyoto University

Recognizes outstanding achievements of master's students in their research. Based on the quality and originality of the thesis, as well as the academic contribution and social impact of the research.

MEXT (文部科学省) Research Scholarship

Japanese government

Competitive scholarship for international students to study in graduate courses at Japanese universities as research students funded by the The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

Final Year Project Grant

Naim Siddique Final Year Project Fund

Established by the NED Alumni Association at Southern California to support the final year projects of undergraduate engineering students at NED University of Engineering and Technology. 10,000 USD granted annually to ten teams for best proposals and on recommendation of faculty project advisor.

SCAI PhD Post Co-Manager

School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI), ASU

Collaborated with the Communications Specialist to co-manage the SCAI PhD Post, a monthly newsletter featuring the key updates and achievements of the PhD students at SCAI.

International Student/Guide

WAK Japan, Kyoto, Japan

Guided Japanese high school students through tours in Kyoto, interacting in English to increase their confidence in speaking a foreign language. Introduced students and cafe patrons to Pakistani culture through presentations and conversations.

Field Officer

1947 Partition Archive and Stanford University Libraries

Supervised and assisted three volunteers in rural Sindh and Karachi in recording and preserving the life stories and oral histories of witnesses of the 1947 Partition of British India. Collectively recorded 90 stories.

Oral History Apprentice

1947 Partition Archive

Located and interviewed 83 witnesses of the 1947 Partition of British India to preserve their life stories and oral histories. Organized two events called Voices of Partition where witnesses and survivors of the 1947 Partition told their stories.

• Interviewed by BBC Radio for my volunteer work. The documentary can be found at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05b70f4