Emma Shedden

About Me

I am a 3rd-year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, where I am fortunate to be advised by Rajeev Alur and Osbert Bastani. My research interests include formally guaranteed agentic security and neurosymbolic frameworks for robotic control. I'm grateful to be supported by the NSF GRFP.

I am a member of trustml@Penn and the ASSET Center.

In Fall 2026, I am a teaching assistant for CIS 4190/5190: Applied Machine Learning.

Previously, I completed my undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Mathematics in 2024 at the University of Michigan, where my research on CS pedagogy and cognition was advised by Wes Weimer. I also worked on feature conflict resolution in cyber-physical systems with Eunsuk Kang at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am an alumna of the REUSE program.

Publications

Leveraging VLMs for Specification-Guided Policy Learning Emma Shedden, Rajeev Alur, & Osbert Bastani.
Preprint, submitted to AAAI 2027. [pdf]
An Empirical Study of Anonymous, Unmoderated, and Online Peer-to-Peer Programming Tutoring Conversations Priscila Santiesteban, Emma Shedden, Madeline Endres, & Westley Weimer.
In Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE-SEET), 2026. [pdf] [slides]
Causal Relationships and Programming Outcomes: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Experiment Hammad Ahmad, Madeleine Endres, Kaia Newman, Priscila Santiesteban, Emma Shedden, & Westley Weimer.
In Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2024. Distinguished Paper Award. [pdf]
Runtime Resolution of Feature Interactions through Adaptive Requirement Weakening Simon Chu, Emma Shedden, Changjian Zhang, Rômulo Meira-Góes, Gabriel A. Moreno, David Garlan, & Eunsuk Kang.
In Proceedings of the 18th Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems (SEAMS), 2023. [pdf]