Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering @ George Washington University
Director of the Hearth Laboratory
Many of the settings where we most need help—caring for an aging population, supporting nurses and clinicians, responding in emergencies—are also among the most complex and high-stakes. Intelligent, interactive systems such as robots show great promise in these settings, but only if they support the people doing the work rather than replace invaluable human contact. Technology that gets this wrong adds burden instead of relief, and erodes the very relationships that care depends on.
This is the focus of the Hearth Laboratory. We combine the strengths of intelligent systems with the power of empowering end users to design, build, and evaluate robotic systems that support real-world needs. We work closely with community partners and stakeholders to bring robots out of the lab and into complex human environments—from senior living to hospitals to emergency response. Our research lies at the intersection of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Robotics.
I am Laura Stegner, an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at GW. Previously, I received my B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 2019 and my M.S./Ph.D. in Computer Science from UW–Madison in 2022 and 2025, respectively. Please get in touch if you would like to chat or collaborate!
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Human-Engaged Approaches to Robots and Technology
A hearth is the warm center of a home—the place where people gather. That spirit anchors our lab. We build intelligent, interactive systems that support people rather than replace invaluable human contact, following an iterative, interdisciplinary process grounded in real human needs: we generate design knowledge with the community, develop novel tools and interfaces, and apply both to build and evaluate systems that work in the real world.
We work closely with community partners and stakeholders to understand their needs firsthand, developing design methods that meaningfully engage the people these systems are meant to serve.
We design and evaluate novel interfaces and end-user programming tools—such as Figaro and Tabula—that allow people to specify and adapt robot behaviors without writing code.
We integrate task scheduling, path/motion planning, computer vision, and more into user-centered systems, then deploy and evaluate them in genuine, high-stakes settings.
Application areas: aging & care · nurse & clinical training · emergency response — and growing.
Our work has appeared at leading venues in human-computer interaction and robotics—including CHI, HRI, and DIS—with support from the National Science Foundation.
The best way to contact me is via email: laura {dot} stegner {at} gwu {dot} edu
If you are interested in joining my lab, please send me an email with [Prospective MS/PhD Student] in the subject line and include the items listed below. Due to a high volume of interest, I may not be able to respond to all inquiries (although I will try my best).