Bill Smart is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University. He does research in the areas of robotics and machine learning. In robotics, Smart is particularly interested in improving the interactions between people and robots, and in machine learning, he is interested in developing strategies for teaching robots to act effectively (or even optimally), based on long-term interactions with the world and given intermittent, and at times incorrect, feedback on their performance. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University in 2002.