Mark Crowley

My research seeks dependable and transparent ways to augment human decision making in complex domains in the presence of many agents, spatial structure, or uncertainty. My focus is on developing new algorithms within the fields of Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning and Ensemble Methods, and Manifold Learning (Dimensionality Reduction) as well as other Research Topics. I often work in collaboration with researchers in applied fields such as Computational Sustainability (including Sustainable Forest Management), Autonomous Driving, AI for Science and Medical Imaging. Read more about me in my bio.

Mark Crowley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo and is a member of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute (WAII). He and his students carry out research into single-agent and multi-agent Reinforcement Learning large-scale 2D/3D image-like processing, and manifold learning/dimensionality reduction. Some of this research is motivated by theoretical opportunities, particularly in manifold learning and multi-agent reinforcement learning. But most of the work flows out of challenges raised by real-world domains including forest fire management, the automotive domain, medical imaging, and digital chemistry/material design.

I’m always happy to talk to people about my research, or the impact of AI/ML/RL on our world and its role in our society in the future, but I do not take on many incoming students, so potential students should read this note about joining my lab.

Besides my publications, you can find my thoughts on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and how technology and science are advancing on my blog Computationally Thinking (updated intermittently) or through social media as @compthink on Twitter(at least for now) or increasingly, on Mastodon. I’m always happy to talk to people about my research, or the impact of AI/ML/RL on our world and its role in our society in the future.

recent news

May 25, 2023 AAMAS talk, PhD Dissertation Award, ChemGymRL Updates
May 4, 2023 Lab News April 2023 - ICML23, Textbook
ICML 2023 paper! Manifold Learning Textbook Published!
Dec 20, 2022 Lab News - Fall 2022
End of the Year End and What a Year! - Tenure, Textbook, JAIR, AAMAS, ToAC

recent highlighted publications

  1. Multi-Advisor-QL
    Multi-Agent Advisor Q-Learning
    In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) : Journal Track. Macao, China. Aug, 2023.
  2. GCRL
    Generative Causal Representation Learning for Out-of-Distribution Motion Forecasting
    Shayan Shirahmad Gale Bagi, Zahra Gharaee, Oliver Schulte, and Mark Crowley
    In International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Jul, 2023.
  3. IOTSMS
    Aggressive Driver Behavior Detection using Parallel Convolutional Neural Networks on Simulated and Real Driving Data
    Zehra Camlica, Jim Quesenberry, Daniel Carballo, and Mark Crowley
    In 9th International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS). IEEE, Milan, Italy. Nov, 2022.
  4. Robot Rescue
    Using Affect as a Communication Modality to Improve Human-Robot Communication in Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue Scenarios
    Sami Alperen Akgun, Moojan Ghafurian, Mark Crowley, and Kerstin Dautenhahn.
    IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. arXiv, Nov, 2022.
  5. Textbook
    Elements of Dimensionality Reduction and Manifold Learning
    Springer Nature, Feb, 2023.