About

With a background in software development and educational innovation, Bethany is a Teaching Professor  and the Assistant Dean of Computer Programs at Northeastern University’s Vancouver and Seattle campuses. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University where she researched Reinforcement Learning.  Dr. Edmunds is passionate about using technology to allow for more diverse work environments and making the tech community more inclusive.

Media

Presentations

Interviews

Panels

Awards

Khoury College Award for Broadening Participation in Computing 2023

YWCA Metro Vancouver Women of Distinction Education, Training, and Development  2019

Business in Vancouver’s Top Forty under 40 2018

BC’s Most Influential Women – 2018 BC Business Magazine 2018

Brian Thom Advancing Teaching Excellence Award 2016

National Science Foundation’s  Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Fellowship  2006-2008

Publications

(under Bethany R. Leffler)

Research Focus: Generalized reinforcement learning for mobile robotics

“Provably Efficient Learning with Typed Parametric Models”, Emily Brunskill, Bethany R. Leffler, Lihong Li, Michael L. Littman, and Nicholas Roy. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2009.

 

“The Adaptive K-Meteorologists Problem and Its Application to Structure Learning and Feature Selection in Reinforcement Learning”, Carlos Diuk, Lihong Li, and Bethany R. Leffler. Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning, 2009.

 

“Efficient Learning of Dynamics Models using Terrain Classification”, Bethany R. Leffler, Chris R. Mansley, and Michael L. Littman. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems, 2008.

 

“CORL: A Continuous-State Offset-Dynamics Reinforcement Learner”, Emma Brunskill, Bethany R. Leffler, Lihong Li, Michael L. Littman, and Nicholas Roy.  Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. 2008.

 

“Efficient Reinforcement Learning with Relocatable Action Models”, Bethany R. Leffler, Michael L. Littman, and Timothy Edmunds. Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2007.

 

“Efficient Exploration with Latent Structure”, Bethany R. Leffler, Michael L. Littman, Alexander L. Strehl, and Thomas Walsh. Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems, 2005.