Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain and human cognition. It’s an area of research she wasn’t aware of before she arrived at MIT in the fall of 2018, and one Patel likely wouldn’t have considered if she hadn’t enrolled in a newly launched blended major, Course 6-9: Computation...…Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain and human cognition. It’s an area of research she wasn’t aware of before she arrived at MIT in the fall of 2018, and one Patel likely wouldn’t have considered if she hadn’t enrolled in a newly launched blended major, Course 6-9: Computation...WW…