Tabitha Edith Lee

Roboticist and Postdoctoral Fellow

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Greetings! I’m Tabitha, or “Tab” for short. I am a roboticist and postdoctoral fellow at the Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle at Université de Montréal and Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. I am grateful to be advised by Prof. Glen Berseth and Prof. Yoshua Bengio. My research is graciously supported by the IVADO Postdoctoral Research Funding Program.

Previously, I completed my Ph.D. in Robotics at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where I was a member of the Intelligent Autonomous Manipulation group led by Prof. Oliver Kroemer. During my Ph.D., my thesis focused on causal robot learning for manipulation. Specifically, I investigated the interplay between robot perception and control through the lens of causality to learn and leverage the causal structure of manipulation tasks. To this end, my research built toward a causal robot learning system that empowers lifelong autonomous manipulation in challenging, open-world settings, such as homes, hospitals, and restaurants.

Additionally, I am broadly interested in fundamental robotics and machine intelligence problems that have strong real-world impact. I am grateful for the opportunity to explore such problems as a Senior Autonomy/Artificial Intelligence Researcher at the Advanced Technology Center of Lockheed Martin Space following my Ph.D., as well as during my prior internships with NVIDIA’s Seattle Robotics Lab, Lockheed Martin Space ATC, and Uber ATG.

Prior to my Ph.D., I invented, developed, and tested a vision-based localization system for an underwater robot that inspects nuclear reactors. This technology was invented through my M.S. in Robotics research with Prof. Nathan Michael and the Resilient Intelligent Systems Lab. Before CMU, I led the development of multiple software capabilities for safety-critical autonomous systems in the aerospace industry.

I am also an IVADO Postdoctoral Research Funding Program recipient, an RSS Pioneer, an NCWIT Collegiate Award Honorable Mention recipient, and a Siebel Scholar in Computer Science.

Beyond my technical interests, I am also interested in working towards greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in both academia and society, including ways in which automation can lead to greater societal advancement.

My website is currently a work in progress since I have moved to a new host. Thank you for your patience while I update it!

news

May 20, 2025 I am delighted to share that I have been selected as a recipient of the IVADO 2025 Postdoctoral Research Funding Program! Thank you very much, IVADO, for your generous support of my research!
Feb 24, 2025 I have started my postdoc with Prof. Glen Berseth and Prof. Yoshua Bengio at Université de Montréal and Mila! Excited for the wonderful opportunity! 👩🏻‍🔬

selected publications

  1. causal-robot-learning-for-manipulation-preview.png
    Causal Robot Learning for Manipulation
    Tabitha Edith Lee
    Carnegie Mellon University, Ph.D. Thesis, 2024
  2. scale-overview.png
    SCALE: Causal Learning and Discovery of Robot Manipulation Skills using Simulation
    Tabitha Edith Lee*, Shivam Vats*, Siddharth Girdhar, and Oliver Kroemer
    7th Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2023
  3. crest-structural-sim-to-real-overview.png
    Causal Reasoning in Simulation for Structure and Transfer Learning of Robot Manipulation Policies
    Tabitha Edith Lee, Jialiang (Alan) Zhao, Amrita S. Sawhney, Siddharth Girdhar, and Oliver Kroemer
    2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021