About me

Hi! I’m Larisa, and I build robots that adapt to the people using them!

I’m a Postdoctoral Researcher in the argallab at Northwestern University and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, where I also completed my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2026, advised by Dr. Brenna Argall. These days I’m working on assistive robots, most recently a shared-control powered wheelchair that helps people steer around obstacles while keeping them firmly in the driver’s seat.

The thread running through my work is a simple observation: the way real people use a control interface, such as ajoystick, a sip-and-puff straw, or eye gaze tracker, to control a device rarely matches the assumptions that engineers design around. I study those control interface signals and build systems that interpret them better, assume less, and behave predictably. Along the way I’ve worked on intent inference for robot arm teleoperation, eye-gaze interfaces that double as a window into mental workload, assisted wheelchair driving paradigms, and accessible in-vehicle controls during an internship at GM R&D.

Most of my research happens alongside the people it’s meant for. I run studies with powered wheelchair users, on real hardware, often over multiple days and weeks. I believe the real test of a system is whether it works for the person who needs it.