Curriculum Vitae

Academic background, research, teaching, projects, and technical experience. Use the PDF icon to download the current version.

Contact Information

Name Owen M. Hoffman
Professional Title Computer Science Ph.D. Student
Email owenhoff01@gmail.com
Location College Park, Maryland

Professional Summary

Computer Science Ph.D. student in the University of Maryland’s GAMMA Lab interested in learning-based human-aware autonomy, human intent anticipation, interaction-aware decision-making, and data-efficient robot learning from human interactions.

Experience

  • 2026 - Present

    College Park, MD

    Graduate Researcher
    University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science - GAMMA Lab
    Research with Prof. Dinesh Manocha.
    • Investigating safe, human-aware embodied AI, with an emphasis on socially aware robot navigation in environments shared with people.
    • Exploring how multimodal cues about human behavior can inform robot perception, planning, and decision-making.
  • 2025 - 2026

    Swarthmore, PA

    Research Assistant
    Swarthmore College, Collective Resilience Lab
    Human-centered AI safety research with Prof. Sukrit Venkatagiri.
    • Built Privacy Navigator, an LLM-assisted pipeline that extracts and scores privacy disclosures and identifies actionable privacy steps for users.
    • Designed and implemented ScamPilot, an adaptive LLM-agent system for interactive scam-prevention education.
    • Developed controlled prompting and experimental pipelines, led a user study, and implemented statistical analyses of scam recognition, response efficacy, and self-efficacy.
    • Outcome: First-author paper published at ACM CHI 2026 and position paper accepted at the ACM CUI Personas Workshop 2025.
  • 2026 - Present

    College Park, MD

    Teaching Assistant - CMSC 216: Introduction to Computer Systems
    University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science
    • Lead two lab sections, each meeting twice weekly, serving 60 students in total.
    • Support instruction in C programming, memory management, debugging, and low-level computer systems.
    • Hold office hours and provide technical guidance on programming assignments and course material.
  • 2024 - 2026

    Swarthmore, PA

    Grader & Lab Teaching Assistant
    Swarthmore College, Department of Engineering
    • Supported ENGR 021: Computer Engineering Fundamentals and ENGR 012: Linear Physical Systems Analysis through grading, rubric development, and written feedback.
    • Provided hands-on debugging and technical guidance to student teams in computer engineering laboratories.
  • 2024 - 2024

    Remote

    Software Developer Intern
    Plurilock Security Inc.
    • Developed and iterated on a TypeScript and React interface for a cybersecurity product.
    • Built and integrated more than ten REST API service calls with JWT-based authorization and dynamic client-side data updates.
    • Contributed through code reviews, GitFlow-based development, testing, and QA in an agile engineering team.

Education

Honors and Awards

  • 2026
    University of Maryland Dean's Fellowship
    University of Maryland

    Graduate fellowship providing supplemental support for the standard doctoral stipend.

  • 2025
    Swarthmore College Summer Research Fellowship
    Swarthmore College

    Supported full-time summer undergraduate research in Human-Computer Interaction.

  • 2026
    Tau Beta Pi
    Engineering Honor Society

    Elected member.

  • 2025
    Sigma Xi
    Scientific Research Honor Society

    Associate Member; recipient of a travel grant supporting presentation at the ACM CUI Workshop on Personas Evolved.

Publications

Projects

  • Senior Capstone: Trash vs. Recycling Robot

    ROS 2 mobile robot system for approaching seated users, collecting deposited items, and routing trash and recycling to separate bins.

    • Implemented a CasADi-based model predictive controller with obstacle-avoidance constraints and finite-horizon linear and angular velocity optimization.
    • Collaborated on the broader perception-to-control pipeline in a three-person team.
  • Autonomous TurtleBot Cone-Course Navigation

    Camera-based autonomous navigation using ROS and Python.

    • Integrated visual perception, wheel-encoder odometry, and ROS frame transforms.
    • Implemented pure pursuit, acceleration filtering, lost-gate recovery, and emergency stops from bumper and cliff sensors.

Skills

Robotics & Perception: ROS/ROS 2, Nav2, OpenCV, mobile robot navigation, path planning, model predictive control, camera-based perception
Machine Learning & AI: PyTorch, TensorFlow/Keras, scikit-learn, neural networks, large language models, multimodal learning
Programming: Python, C/C++, MATLAB, R, TypeScript/JavaScript, SQL
Data & Systems: NumPy, pandas, Git, Docker, Linux, AWS

Interests

Activities: running, specialty coffee, downhill skiing, former NCAA Division III varsity lacrosse player