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WNCG alumnus Dr. Qi Lei has received the 2021 Oden Institute Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her winning dissertation, “Provably effective algorithms for min-max optimization," proposes optimization algorithms to find the equilibrium point of two-player zero-sum games. Read the dissertation abstract and find the link to the full text via the University of Texas Libraries. At WNCG, Lei was advised by Prof. Alex Dimakis; she was co-advised by Dr. Inderjit Dhillon from the University of Texas Department of Computer Science.

In modern society, robots and humans are becoming increasingly integrated. Already, robots assist people in factories, hospitals and households, as well as share the roads. These collaborations raise demands for technological innovation and research to develop and enable friendly robots that can work effectively with, for and around people.