Kathryn E. Merrick

Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School (Teaching) at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW Canberra). PhD (Computer Science) 2007.

IEEE CIS Cognitive and Developmental Systems Technical Committee, Chair 2017-2018

IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, ACT Chapter, Chair 2017-2018

Kathryn's research interests lie in the field of autonomous mental development for machines (specifically computers). Research in autonomous mental development uses principles of cognitive and developmental sciences to build artificial systems capable of ontogenetic development. Such systems initially have little or no domain-specific knowledge or skills in their "infant" stage, but are equipped with generic reasoning mechanisms that permit them to acquire such knowledge and skills through interaction with their environment as they mature to an "adult" stage. Kathryn's research speciality within this domain is the development, use and evaluation of computational models of motivation.