Malihe Alikhani
Papers
2
Total Citations
12
H-Index
2
About
Malihe Alikhani is a leading researcher in the intersection of natural language processing, multimodal communication, and human-robot interaction. Her work fundamentally explores how intelligent systems can achieve common ground with human partners—the mutual understanding essential for effective collaboration. Alikhani’s major contributions include pioneering frameworks for interpreting robotic gestures, such as her influential 2020 paper "That and There: Judging the Intent of Pointing Actions with Robotic Arms" (9 citations), which established interpretive principles for how robotic arms can use pointing to convey task information. This work bridges computational linguistics and robotics, enabling more intuitive human-robot teamwork. Her research on grounding in multimodal dialogue (3 citations) extends classical dialogue models to account for the rich, multi-channel communication that occurs when agents share physical and linguistic contexts. Alikhani’s impact lies in creating the theoretical and computational foundations for robots that can not only execute commands but also actively negotiate meaning with humans—a crucial step toward truly collaborative AI. Her achievements position her at the forefront of efforts to make human-robot interaction as natural and effective as human-human communication.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1That and There: Judging the Intent of Pointing Actions with Robotic Arms9 citations · 2020
- 2Achieving Common Ground in Multi-modal Dialogue3 citations · 2020