Department of Computer Science
Paola Cascante-Bonilla received her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Rice University in 2024, her Master of Computer Science at the University of Virginia in 2021, and a B.S. in Engineering at the Tecnológico de Costa Rica in 2018. Before joining the computer science department at Stony Brook, Dr. Cascante-Bonilla is working as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).
Paola's research focuses on developing systems capable of compositional reasoning and common-sense inference, using vision and language, while addressing problems regarding cultural biases, data distribution, explainability, and trustworthy AI. Her work also focuses on developing simulated environments to provide a safe, controlled setting where embodied agents can learn. Her aim is to create virtual environments and synthetic agents that can effectively collaborate and solve complex tasks by leveraging the implicit knowledge of large-scale pre-trained deep learning models.