First position: Critical Mass
Saeoul worked on UI/UX design for our autonomy software in our autonomous racing project. She joined Critical Mass as a Senior Experience Designer and is now working with a client of Apple.
See his homepage here.
Mahmoud has been working on perception and navigation. His current project is about integration of perception, navigation, and exploration with Gaussian Processes.
Can is interested in vision and multiple modal perception, as well as their applications in various robotic platforms.
Hassan is working on motion planning and control methods. His has been working on navigation of UGVs on rough terrains. He is also interested in racecar high-speed control.
Khan is interested in visual perception for robot navigation. He is also exploring vision language models for enriching the spatial and semantic reasoning of mobile robots.
Ihab has been working on path integral control with applications on various autonomous platforms such as aerial, ground and manipulator robots.
Alejandro has been working on situation awareness for autonomous systems. His research interests include latent factor representation and causal reasoning for system dynamics modeling.
Durgakant's research interests include UAV design and control, as well as multi-robot systems (including UAV+UGV teaming and drone swarms).
Tristan joined the lab in Fall 2025. He got his B.S. from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He is interested in multi-agent systems and reinforcement learning.
Shaekh joined the lab in Spring 2025. In the past he worked on state estimation for aerial vehicles. He is still exploring research areas.
Youwei joined the lab in Fall 2023. He has been working on diffusion models for robot navigation in extremely challening environments.
Anooshka is a Master student joined the lab in Fall 2024. She is working on database and UI/UX for our autonomy software.
Divya is a Master student joined the lab in Summer 2023. She is exploring research interest on deep learning and imitation learning of robot navigation.
Vivek is a Master student joined the lab in Fall 2024. He is interested in dynamics modeling for complex vehicle systems.
Austin is a Master student joined the lab in Fall 2025. He is investigating research on autonomous remote sensing.
Zic is a Master student joined the lab in Fall 2023. She has been working on UI/UX design for our racecar.
First position: Critical Mass
Saeoul worked on UI/UX design for our autonomy software in our autonomous racing project. She joined Critical Mass as a Senior Experience Designer and is now working with a client of Apple.
Current position: PhD student at IU
Paul worked on perception with camaras, radars as well as their important applications on various autonomous systems during 2024 and 2025. Paul worked in NSWC Crane before being a student at IU.
First position: Helix Wireless
Charan obtained his Master's degree from Data Science at IU. He contributed on web and interface design for our autonomous racing project.
First position: Genesys
Abe worked on autonomous navigation in unstructured environment, with his PhD mentor Mahmoud Ali. He published a 1st authored ICRA paper before he obtained his Bachalor degree in Spring 2024.
First position: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)
Michael worked on planning and navigation of autonomous surface vehicles, with his PhD mentors Weizhe Chen and Paul Coen. He obtained his Accelerated Master's degree in Spring 2024.
First position: Imagine Learning
Pragat worked with his PhD mentor Zheng Chen on generation of pixel-accurate semantic label maps from images acquired from a high-fidelity simulator, where the generated dataset is used for UGV autonomous driving.
First position: Palantir Technologies
Andrew worked on autonomous exploration of unknown environment with his PhD mentor Durgakant Pushp. He obtained his Bachalor degree in Spring 2024.
First position: OKSI
AJ worked on imitation learning applicable to UGV maneuver with his PhD mentor Junhong Xu. He obtained his Accelerated Master degree in Winter 2023.
First position: Mount Sinai
Nick joined the lab in Fall 2022 and obtained his Master's degree in Summer 2023. He worked on reinforcement learning applicable to UGV maneuver with his PhD mentor Ihab Mohamed.
First position: Research Software Developer at IU
Deepak joined the lab in Fall 2022. He worked on semantic map completion that can be used for navigating autonomous vehicles.
First position: NSWC-Crane
As a receipient of DoD SMART Scholarship, Adam's research interest has been the development and control of autonomous underwater vehicles, for both hardware and software. Adam obtained his Master degree in Spring 2023.
First position: Technology Consulting, DC
Mary was a receipient of Indiana LSAMP Scholarship. She worked with her PhD mentor Durgakant Pushp on UAVs for assessing dangerous scenarios by differentiating the aggressor from the victims using deep learning in image recognition technology.
First position: Amazon
Manuja worked on a project of designing hardware and software systems of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) since Fall 2019 and graduated with a Master degree in Spring 2021. She joined Amazon in Seattle after graduation.
First position: Bytedance
Shreyas worked on a project of designing hardware and software systems of an AUV since Fall 2019 and graduated with a Master degree in Spring 2021. Together with Manuja, Shreyas has led and mentored a few undergraduate students working on the AUV projects.
First position: Metron (Unmanned Systems Division)
Sam joined the lab in Fall 2019 and graduated with a Master degree in Fall 2020. Sam worked on decision-theoretic planning and integrated his background in Physics with robotics decision making.
First position: PhD student in Indiana University
Malintha's research project is to control a team of small aerial vehicles. His work combines high-level swarm coordination mechanisms (e.g., behaviors inspired from bird flocking) with low-level trajectory control.
First position: General Motors (as software engineer)
As an undergrad, Kristopher worked on building an autonomous underwater vehicle. Kristopher obtained his undergrad dgree from Indiana University.
First position: Uber (as machine learning engineer)
Rushabh worked on ground vehicle planning and learning with his research mentor Junhong Xu. Rushabh obtained his Masters' dgree from Indiana University.
First position: Unity (as computer vision/machine learning engineer)
Jay worked on data-driven planning with his research mentor Weizhe Chen. Jay got his Masters' dgree from Indiana University.
First position: Boeing (as robotics engineering intern)
As a senior undergraduate student at Indiana University, Gabrielle helped graduate students for research tasks such as robot design and control in VAIL.
First position: National Security Innovation Network (as X-Force program intern)
As a senior undergraduate student at Indiana University, Paula finished two robotics term projects with ground vehicles in VAIL.
First position: IU graduate student (Accelerated Master of Science in Information Systems)
As an undergrad, Isaiah worked on navigation of a ground robot. He was supported by NSF Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program.
First position: IBM
Nawaz worked on small quadrotor swarm control. Nawaz got his Masters' dgree from Indiana University.
First position: IU graduate student (Accelerated Master of Science in Information Systems)
As an undergrad, Jamon worked on navigation of a ground robot. He was supported by NSF Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program.
First position: Qualcomm
Danial worked on autonomous maneuvers of micro drones and tested Crazyflie 2.0. Danial got his Masters' dgree from Indiana University.
First position: AutoX (self-driving car startup)
Yezhen worked on robotic environmental exploration and mapping, especially the underwater environment. Yezhen got his Masters' dgree from University of Southern California and his BS from the University of Science and Technology of China.
First position: Microsoft (Natural Language Processing group)
Chen worked on Deep Reinforcement Learning that allows marine robot to effectively act under ocean dynamics. Chen got his Masters' dgree from USC and his BS from Tsinghua University.
First position: Nvidia (Robotics group)
Shoubhik worked on Decision-theoretic Planning and Reinforcement Learning. Shoubhik got his Masters' dgree from USC and his BE from Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi.
First position: Brain Corp (self-driving vehicles)
Kai-Cheih worked on Robotics, informative planning, and environmental sensing and monitoring. Kai-Chieh got his Masters' dgree from University of Southern California and BS from National Taiwan University.
First position: Iterable (as machine learning engineer)
Steven worked on web development for the 2017 Southern California Robotics Symposium. Steven got his Masters' dgree from USC and his BS from UCLA.
First position: TuSimple (self-driving truck startup)
Zhibei worked on the Traveling Salesman Problem, as well as the multi-robot coordination. Zhibei got his Masters' dgree from USC and BS from Fudan University.
First position: Google
Hesen worked on Markov Decision Processes and stochastic shortest paths. Hesen got his Masters' dgree from USC and BEng from University of Liverpool.
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First position: Research Scientist
Thesis: Towards Robust Robotic Visual Perception.
Zheng defended his Ph.D. thesis in Summer 2024. Zheng has explored and connected multiple research areas during his PhD study, including generative diffusion models, robotic mapping, and UAV/UGV control. After graduation, Zheng transitioned to an industrial position where his research now focuses on text-to-video generation, specifically creating short video clips similar to OpenAI's Sora.
First position: Founding member of a robotics startup
Thesis: Towards Automated Science: Active Robot Learning for Information Gathering.
Weizhe defended his Ph.D. thesis in Spring 2024. He was co-advised by Prof. Lantao Liu and Prof. Roni Khardon. His research focuses on enabling robots to proactively gather important data from the environment through data-efficient learning and informative planning, with applications in active mapping using Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs). Upon his graduation, he became a founding member of a Boston-based robotics startup (more information forthcoming).
First position: Research Scientist
Thesis: Robust Motion Planning and Control for Autonomous Robots under Uncertainty.
Since joining VAIL in 2018, Junhong has focused his research on data-driven planning and decision-making for ground robots in complex on-road and off-road conditions. After graduation, Junhong first served as a Group Lead in DiDi Research (self-driving) in San Francisco and then joined Nuro as a Research Scientist to continue his work on developing self-driving cars.