About me
I am a Research Scientist at J. P. Morgan AI Research. My area of interest is integration of planning, acting, and learning.
I have worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park. I defended my PhD in Summer of 2020. My PhD advisor was Prof. Dana Nau. Prior to this, I did my undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and worked as a Software Engineer at Microsoft.
My Ph.D. thesis topic was 'Acting, planning and learning with hierarchical operational models' [link]. It addresses the challenges faced by hierarchically organized actors (that do continual online planning and acting) in dynamic environments. We have developed integrated algorithms that incorporate all three: acting, planning, and learning using a unified representation of hierarchical operational models.
Here is a link to my résumé.
Collaborators: Prof. Dana Nau, Dr. Mak Roberts, Dr. Malik Ghallab, Paolo Traverso, Dr. Myong Kang.
Selected Publications
(For full list, please see this link)
[9] Mahmoud Mahfouz, Sriram Gopalakrishnan, Miguel Suau, Sunandita Patra, Danilo Mandic, Daniele Magazzeni, Manuela Veloso. Towards Asset Allocation Using Behavioural Cloning and Reinforcement Learning. AAAI' 23. Bridge on AI for Financial Services. 2023.
[8] Sunandita Patra, Mark Cavolowsky, Onur Kulaksizoglu, Ruoxi Li, Laura Hiatt, Mark Roberts, Dana Nau. A Hierarchical Goal-Biased Curriculum for Training Reinforcement Learning. FLAIRS. 2022. [paper]
[7] Sunandita Patra, James Mason, Malik Ghallab, Paolo Traverso, Dana Nau. Deliberative Acting, Online Planning and Learning with Hierarchical Operational Models. Artificial Intelligence (AIJ). 2021. [paper]
[6] Ruoxi Li, Sunandita Patra, Dana Nau. Decentralized Refinement Planning and Acting. Accepted for publication at ICAPS-21. [paper]
[5] Sunandita Patra, Alex Velazquez, Myong Kang, Dana Nau. Using Online Planning and Acting to Recover from Cyberattacks on Software-defined Networks. IAAI-21. [paper][poster]
[4] Sunandita Patra, James Mason, Amit Kumar, Malik Ghallab, Dana Nau, Paolo Traverso. Integrating Acting, Planning, and Learning in Hierarchical Operational Models. ICAPS 2020. Best Student Paper Honorable Mention Award. [paper][poster]
[3] Sunandita Patra, Malik Ghallab, Dana Nau, Paolo Traverso. Acting and Planning Using Operational Models. AAAI 2019. [paper][poster]
[2] Sunandita Patra, Malik Ghallab, Dana Nau and Paolo Traverso. APE: An Acting and Planning Engine. Journal of Advances in Cognitive Systems, 2018. [paper]
[1] Sunandita Patra, Satya Gautam Vadlamudi, and Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. Anytime contract search. SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2013. [paper]
Talks
[Nov 2022] Invited talk at DFKI Germany
[May 2021] Invited talk at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
[Jun 2021] Invited talk at Xerox PARC
[May 2021] Invited talk at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL) [slides]
[Feb 2021] Paper presentation at IAAI 2020 [slides]
[Dec 2020] Invited talk at Naval Warfare Center [slides]
[Oct 2020] Paper presentation at ICAPS 2020 [video]
[Oct 2020] Summer School at ICAPS 2020 [video]
