Alenna C. Spiro

Hi! I’m Alenna, a PhD student in Computer Science at Northeastern University. I’m interested in making robotic systems more efficient and autonomous by using biologically inspired mechanisms. Building upon work from psychology and neuroscience, I’m interested in understanding how animals and humans learn and make decisions, and applying similar principles to computer vision, robotics, and machine learning. My current research focuses on robotic self-awareness, determining whether a given fault requires immediate intervention or can be safely ignored.

Research interests

• Reinforcement learning and learning-based control
• Decision-making under uncertainty and risk-sensitive planning
• Robot self-awareness and cost-optimal fault recovery
• Biologically inspired learning — bridging psychology and neuroscience to robotics
• Computer vision for perception and affordances

Currently building

Savvy — a privacy-conscious AI secretary that runs locally and connects an LLM to your calendar, email, tasks, and messages. Browse my projects, read my CV, or find my code on GitHub.