About Blake
I am a professor of computer science at Colorado College. My research area is human-robot interaction, and my specific interests include verbal noncompliance and clarification interactions, robot ethics, natural language generation, robot gender presentation, and mental models of robot identity. For more details about my work and my background, keep reading below.
After graduating from Colorado College in 2016 with a computer science major and a minor in discrete math, I completed my Master's degree in computer science advised by Dr. Tracy Camp at the Colorado School of Mines. For my Master's thesis, I applied machine learning techniques to the task of extracting ostensibly private information from the encrypted traffic between an Amazon Echo and its servers. I then switched research areas to human-robot interaction and began pursuing my doctorate.
I completed my PhD under advisor Dr. Tom Williams in the Department of Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines in winter of 2021. During grad school, I enjoyed the opportunity to teach and TA for several classes at Mines, including Computer Science 101, Introduction to Linux, and Computer Vision.
I was a visiting professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College for 3 semesters starting spring 2022. At Harvey Mudd, I taught Natural Language Processing, Principles of Computer Science, and Robot Ethics. I am now extremely excited to be joining the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Colorado College in a tenure track position as of fall 2023. At Colorado College, I will continue to pursue my research in human-robot interaction with specific interest in verbal noncompliance and clarification interactions, robot ethics, natural language generation (especially pragmatics), robot gender presentation, and mental models of robot identity. When I'm not working, I'm climbing rocks.