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For this month's Faculty Spotlight, we interviewed Associate Professor Alessandro Roncone (Computer Science), who serves as the Director of the Human Interaction and Robotics Group and the Associate Director of the MS and PhD Program in Robotics.

Partnership journey

IRP: Could you share a bit about how industry relationships have developed for you, and what’s worked well along the way? ÌýWhere have you learned the most of how to work with industry?

Alessandro Roncone works with a student in his lab, the Human Interaction and Robotics Group

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Collaborate to innovate

Through access to specialized expertise, facilities and talent, industry partners can accelerate discovery, de-risk early-stage work and advance ideas that might otherwise sit outside internal bandwidth. For faculty, these collaborations often support students, strengthen proposals and create opportunities to test ideas beyond the lab—while preserving academic rigor and independence.Ìý

Connect with the Industry Research Partnerships team to learn more.Ìý

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Professor Roncone: My industry relationships have grown out of the research itself rather than deliberate outreach. There is no single path: sometimes a company has picked up our open source work directly; other times a relationship started from a conversation or a shared technical interest. What is common across all of them is a foundation of work that is rigorous enough to publish and concrete enough to be used. Ìý

I also think it's important to understand the entity on the other side in terms of their actual needs and constraints, and where our work can be genuinely useful to them rather than just "interesting." A result that is significant to us is not automatically relevant to a partner, and recognizing that difference early is what makes a collaboration happen. Underlying all of this is how I structure my lab's research: we work backwards from large, foundational problems that advance the science and take years to resolve, while ensuring that the steps along the way carry applied value a potential partner can benefit from today. I want to be clear that there is a certain tension between the two, and it is hard to hold both at once. We take it on deliberately, because our work only matters if it eventually has beneficial impact on society, and reaching that point is something no lab can do alone.

CU Boulder’s unique opportunity

IRP: What are some areas where you see unique opportunities for CU Boulder to shine in building industry partnerships?

Professor Roncone: CU Boulder's opportunity is in the problems that industry is structurally unable to prioritize: foundational, long-horizon, cross-disciplinary work that does not map onto a product roadmap. Companies are effective at scaling a solution once a problem is well-defined, but formulating those problems in the first place—and taking on the ones that may take years to pay off—is something universities are positioned to do. That is where we can complement industry rather than compete with it.

AI is becoming a research strength of the university across disciplines, from the engineering and physical sciences to the social and life sciences. The next frontier, in my view, is moving from AI that operates on data from the digital world toward systems that perceive, reason and act in the physical one—and that work alongside people rather than apart from them. It is a harder and less saturated problem that depends on interaction, sensing and hardware rather than on scale alone. Boulder is well positioned to lead there: we combine strength on the algorithmic side of AI and machine learning with expertise in robotics, aerospace and biomedical engineering, co-located on one campus and alongside the national laboratories. It’s important to note that with world experts across these areas, CU Boulder is positioned not only to contribute to this agenda but to drive it. We should be deliberate about building the industry partnerships that let us press that advantage.

Value to your work

IRP: From your perspective, how have these industry partnerships contributed to your research or lab, whether through new ideas, resources, or different types of problems to work on?Ìý

Professor Roncone: The most important contribution has been to problem selection. Industry partners give us visibility into the constraints that real systems operate under in terms of deployment conditions, cost, reliability and scale. This understanding, in turn, sharpens which research questions are worth pursuing. Staying close to a partner's actual problems keeps the work anchored to questions that matter, and that has made my lab's research better, not just more applicable.

The partnerships also expose us to problems and resources we would not otherwise encounter. Seeing where current approaches fall short in practice (and understanding why) often points us toward the research questions that turn out to be the most interesting. We still work at the level of fundamental research, but with a clearer sense of which of those fundamental questions are the ones that actually matter downstream.

Student experience

IRP: We’re also interested in the student impact. How have these industry-connected projects shaped the experience for your students in terms of skills, exposure, or confidence working on real-world challenges?

Professor Roncone: The biggest effect has been on how my students see the relevance of their own work. Engaging with industry partners shows them that the fundamental questions they are working on connect to problems people outside academia genuinely care about, and that changes how they approach the research. It also builds a set of skills that are hard to teach directly. Students learn to communicate their work to people who do not share their assumptions, to understand a problem from another organization's perspective, and to tell the difference between a result that is interesting and one that is useful. Exposure to researchers and engineers outside the university gives them a clearer sense of the landscape they are entering, and the confidence that comes from seeing their ideas taken seriously beyond the lab.

Student outcomes

IRP: Have you seen any examples where this kind of engagement has opened doors for students, whether in career paths, collaborations, or other opportunities?

Professor Roncone: The clearest outcome is the pipeline itself. My students regularly graduate into industry roles, and the engagement they have through these partnerships shapes how prepared they are when they get there: they enter with a real understanding of the kinds of problems companies are working on, not just academic training. That readiness is one of the many reasons industry wants to partner with us in the first place. A collaboration gives a company early access to the top early-career professionals in the field, working alongside them on relevant problems well before they are on the job market. For the students, that exposure opens doors; for the partner, it is one of the most valuable things the relationship provides.

Additional reflections

IRP: Any other reflections or advice you would share with other CU faculty who are starting to explore industry partnerships?

Professor Roncone: A couple of things I would pass on. First, it's worth noting that these relationships are fundamentally between people. They are built on trust and a genuine shared interest in a problem, and that is what sustains them over time. Second, this is hard to do alone, but it is getting easier at CU. The Research & Innovation Office has been active in helping faculty short-circuit a lot of the friction involved, and they are growing their capacity in this area—which makes me optimistic about where this is heading for the university.