Kathryn Elizabeth Kasmarik

Kathryn Kasmarik is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW Canberra). Her current research interests are in building swarming robots that can evolve their own collective behaviours. She is the co-founder of UNSW Canberra AIR (AI in Robotics) Group: AIR Lab (air-cbr.github.io). In 2026 she was named in The Australian's Research Magazine in Australia's top 250 researchers for her contribution to Evolutionary Computation. Kathryn completed a Bachelor of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Sydney, including a study exchange at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She graduated with First Class Honours and the University Medal in 2002. She completed a PhD in computer science through the National ICT Australia and the University of Sydney in 2007. She moved to UNSW Canberra in 2008. She has published over 150 articles in peer reviewed conference and journals. Her research has been funded by the Australian Research Council and Defence Science and Technology Group, among other sources. She was the Deputy Head of School (Teaching) for the School of Engineering and IT from 2018-2021 and Head of School (Acting) establishing a new School of Systems and Computing at UNSW Canberra from 2023-2024. Before joining UNSW Canberra, Kathryn worked as a computer programmer in the financial services industry, as an intern in digital image processing and as a research assistant at the Key Centre for Design Computing and Cognition at the University of Sydney. Her technical skills include python, Java and MATLAB programming, Android application development, artificial neural networks, reinforcement learning, game theory and swarm intelligence algorithms. Building swarming robots that can evolve their own collective behaviours; autonomous mental development for machines; computational models of motivation; reinforcement learning; particle swarm optimisation; game theoretic settings; control of believable digital characters in online games; intelligent sensed environments; developmental robots; anomaly detection; cyber-security; creative decision making; user-task co-adaptation; human-autonomy teaming; motivated reinforcement learning