Erion Plaku is a Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS). At NSF, Dr. Plaku is part of the Robust Intelligence cluster and co-leads the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Plaku was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University (2020-2023) and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Catholic University of America (2010–2020). Dr. Plaku received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Rice University (2008). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics at Johns Hopkins University (2008–2010).

Dr. Plaku's research seeks to increase the ability of robots to plan and act on their own or assist in human-machine cooperative tasks. The long-term goal is to make the supervision of robots similar to that of humans so as to increase productivity and capabilities. This research brings together concepts from robotics, AI, machine learning, and logic to develop planning frameworks that enable supervisors to describe tasks in high-level languages and have such frameworks plan the actions and motions for robots to safely complete their assigned tasks. The research approach follows a full cycle from algorithmic development and theoretical analysis to software implementation, field testing, and deployment. Targeted applications include marine robotics, logistic operations, aerial robotics, medical robotics, and cyber-physical systems.