Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center

George Mason University’s Xuesu Xiao, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science within the College of Engineering and Computing, and Michael S. Bloom, a professor in the Department of Global and Community Health within the College of Public Health, were among the 12 recipients honored by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) with 2026 Outstanding Faculty Awards.

George Mason has a one-of-a-kind off-road test bed to put autonomous vehicles through their paces.

Research Interests: Human-robot interaction, end-user development, AI planning, interaction design

The intersection of art and technology has long been a space for innovation, creativity, and exploration. At George Mason’s Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC) located within the College of Engineering and Computing, this connection has taken center stage with the Integrating Art and Tech Project.

Missy Cummings, a George Mason University mechanical engineering professor, calls herself a “tech futurist,” whose job is to “make tech work. It’s not to stop tech, it’s to help it get better.”

Research Interests: Field robotics, motion planning, machine learning

Kirkpatrick's research is interdisciplinary, cutting across such fields as Philosophy, Political Science, Public Policy, and Computer Science

Research Interests: Distributed learning for MAS, resilient multi-robot systems, distributed resource allocation, human-in-the-loop for MAS

Research Interests: Multi-robot systems, Multi-Agent Games, Dynamics and Control, Cooperative Control, Animal Group Behavior, Bio-inspired Robotics

Research Interests: Reasoning and navigation under uncertainty and unknown environments, perception and learning