As of January 2027, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. ☘️

I run the Ditto Lab (David’s Intelligent Team Tackling AutOnomy). This name takes inspiration from Daphne Koller’s and Stephen Bach’s group names (and Pokémon of course). We are interested in enabling robots to do general-purpose tasks much like we humans do.

More about me: [Research Statement] [Teaching Philosophy] [Diversity Statement]

NOTE: I am recruiting PhD students to work with me at Notre Dame starting Fall 2027! Please mention my name in your application.

Picture of the Golden Dome at Notre Dame

Research Interests 🔍

My lab focuses on the use and applications of AI methods for general-purpose robotics. Rather than building robots (like my colleagues in other departments), we use commercially available robots as platforms to test and evaluate our methods.

Lab Mission: To develop robots that can reason about their actions and the world around them while leveraging commonsense knowledge from text, images, and other modalities, as well as from prior experiences (now typically captured by world models and foundation models). Please see my research statement for a brief overview of my research philosophy and interests.

Our research explores the following themes (click each to expand).

Planning: task and motion planning (TAMP), object-level planning, world models, foundation models, agentic AI for robotics.
  • How do we formulate an instance of a planning problem often in the context of hierarchical planning—for instance, from object-level to task- and motion-level planning?
  • What abstractions are useful when formulating such problems?
  • What are essential components of a world model?
  • How can we bridge symbolic and latent structures?

Acting: robot learning for skills (machine learning, foundation models, vision-language-action (VLA) models), parameterized skills, generalization, (inter)active perception, language grounding.
  • Given a plan (whether detailed or abstract), how does a robot execute and solve it with its skills?
  • How can the robot adapt when things go wrong (if skills fail, objects are missing, or the environment changes)?
  • Where do robot skills come from? Are they agent-designed, learned, or pre-programmed action primitives?

Interfaces and Applications: human-robot collaboration (HRC), human-robot interaction (HRI), domestic robots, assistive robotics, human-in-the-loop (HITL), AI for Science, explainable AI (XAI).
  • How can robots interact or collaborate with humans?
  • How can hierarchical planning frameworks be adapted to different domains, such as our homes, labs, or in the wild?
  • What roles can human feedback, preferences, and values play in hierarchical planning and acting? How can we best communicate the robot’s capabilities and limitations to humans?
  • How can we realize the vision of an autonomous generalist scientist from the robotics perspective?

If any of these things sound interesting to you, please continue reading to learn more about joining the lab!

Joining the Lab 🦾

Prospective PhD Students: Note the following instructions.

  1. Apply directly to the Notre Dame PhD program. Please mention my name (David Paulius) as a potential advisor in your application.
  2. Optionally, only after submitting your application, you may email me a CV and a brief description of your research interests. Please also mention any papers I may have (co-)authored that you find interesting and any papers you may have written that connect to these ideas.
    • Due to the volume of emails, I may not always be able to respond to every email.
    • To ensure that you’ve read this entire page, please include a frog emoji (🐸) somewhere in the subject or body of your email.

Prospective Postdoctoral Researchers: I currently do not have funding for postdocs. HOWEVER, Notre Dame offers fellowships that you may be eligible for, such as the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Engineering. If you apply for this fellowship, please contact me, as you must identify me as a primary mentor. I will do my best to help you with your application! 🫡

BSc/MS Students at Notre Dame: I highly recommend first taking one of my courses if you want to learn about my research interests! Feel free to reach out via email with your CV and a short note about which part of our work interests you.

BSc/MS Students outside of Notre Dame: Opportunities such as E-SURE and i-SURE may be available to you! Read more here.