Starting My Ph.D. at Georgia Institute of Technology

Excited to contribute to the future of robotics

I am excited to update that I will be joining Georgia Institute of Technology as a Ph.D. student at College of Computing, advised by Professor Matthew Gombolay, who has been my dream advisor for a long time :) What makes this opportunity even more exhilarating is that I will be pursuing a Ph.D. in robotics – Despite declaring robotics as my third major during my undergraduate studies and not completing it, I now have the opportunity to pursue this passion at the doctoral level. My future research will concentrate on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI).

During my visit to the campus, I got this amazing view of Atlanta from the 20th floor of the CODA building.

Initiating my doctoral studies at Tech represents a significant milestone in my academic path. I’m eager to contribute to the advancements in HRI and XAI, and I look forward to the discoveries, challenges, and achievements that lie ahead.

Finally, thanks the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and the School of Interactive Computing at for giving me those amazing gifts, especially the adorable T-shirt.

Xijia Zhang
Xijia Zhang
Ph.D. student in Robotics

My research interests include human-robot interaction, explainable artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.