His research focuses on enabling and understanding natural language based human-robot interaction, especially as applied to assistive and search-and-rescue robotics, and has been featured in international AI and Robotics conferences such as HRI, AAAI, AAMAS, IROS, RSS, and INLG, as well as the JHRI and RAS journals. Tom served as program committee co-chair for the 2016 HRI Pioneers workshop and AAAI Fall Symposium on AI-for-HRI (AI-HRI), is a special track session chair for EAAI 2018, and is a Senior Program Committee member for AAAI 2018.