Updated as of March 2026. See my Google Scholar page for the latest publications.
Download CV (PDF) | All Publications | Research
Sep 2015 – Feb 2020
Cambridge, MA
Sep 2015 – Feb 2020 | Cambridge, MA
MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Concentration: Robot Autonomy & Machine Learning |
Sep 2013 – Aug 2015
Cambridge, MA
Sep 2013 – Aug 2015 | Cambridge, MA
MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics
Concentration: Numerical Modeling & Ultrafast Laser Physics |
Sep 2009 – May 2013
Ithaca, NY
Sep 2009 – May 2013 | Ithaca, NY
Cornell University College of Engineering
Concentration: Numerical Modeling & Ultrafast Laser Physics |
AY2023 Nominated for GMU Stearns Center Teaching Excellence Award , AY2023
Oct 2018
Best Paper Finalist | Conference on Robot Learning
, Oct 2018
Nominated a top-3 paper out of over 300 submissions.
Oct 2018
Best Oral Presentation | Conference on Robot Learning
, Oct 2018
Selected best presentation for talk to over 400 conference attendees.
Jun 2013
Trevor R. Cuykendall Memorial Award | Cornell University
, Jun 2013
Awarded for outstanding teaching assistantship in Applied & Engineering Physics.
Jun 2013
Summa Cum Laude | Cornell University
, Jun 2013
Awarded for exemplary grade point average.
Jun 2013
Honors in Engineering Physics | Cornell University
, Jun 2013
Awarded for exceptional undergraduate thesis.
Aug 2020 – present
Aug 2020 – present
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
May 2020 – July 2020
May 2020 – July 2020
Research Specialist Limited
Aug 2015 – May 2020
Aug 2015 – May 2020
Ph.D. Graduate Researcher | Robotics & Machine Learning
Aug 2013 – Jul 2015
Aug 2013 – Jul 2015
SM Graduate Researcher | Optics & Numerical Simulation
Jan 2018 – Apr 2018
Jan 2018 – Apr 2018
Intern (Jan) | Computer Vision Consultant (Feb – Apr)
March 2026 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation: Making Robot Planners Comfortable with Missing Knowledge.” MIT. Robotics Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , March 2026
October 2025 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” University of Virginia. CS Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , October 2025
September 2025 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” UT Austin. AI Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , September 2025
June 2025 “Using Foundation Models for Performant Planning in Uncertain Environments.” Robot Planning in the Era of Foundation Models Workshop at RSS. Seminar. 20 minute invited talk , June 2025
February 2025 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” Virginia Tech Innovation Campus. Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , February 2025
February 2025 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” Cornell University. Robotics Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , February 2025
January 2025 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” University of Milan. Robotics Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , January 2025
November 2024 “Learning and Introspection for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty: Towards Household Robots Comfortable with Missing Knowledge.” Learning Effective Abstractions for Planning Workshop at CoRL. 30 minute invited talk , November 2024
November 2024 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” Lehigh University. Robotics Seminar. 1 hour invited talk , November 2024
October 2024 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” The AI Institute, Boston. 1 hour invited talk , October 2024
October 2024 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” Northeastern University. Robotics Seminar Series. 1 hour invited talk , October 2024
September 2024 “Learning, Introspection, and Anticipation for Effective and Reliable Task Planning Under Uncertainty.” Stevens Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) Seminar Series. 1 hour invited talk , September 2024
December 2023 “Performance, Reliability, and Online Improvement for Long-Horizon Planning under Uncertainty.” Arizona State University, Robotics Seminar , December 2023
April 2022 “Ensuring Reliability and Building Trust for Long-Horizon Planning under Uncertainty.” Invited to give an hour-long (virtual) talk at Intel for their Deep Learning in Practice seminar series. Virtual , April 2022
October 2022 “Ensuring Reliability and Building Trust for Long-Horizon Planning under Uncertainty.” ONR PI Meeting at MIT. Invited to present an overview of my lab's work for an ONR-led PI meeting , October 2022
August 2022 “Learning-Augmented Anticipatory Planning: Building capable and trustworthy robots that plan despite missing knowledge” Brown University. Invited to give an hour long talk in a robotics focused weekly seminar series , August 2022
“Towards Interpretable Decision-Making Under Uncertainty via Subgoal-Based Representations for Planning” AAAI-20 Fall Symposium on Cognitive Systems for Anticipatory Thinking, Washington, DC. November 2020. (Canceled due to COVID-19)
12/1/2024–11/30/2028 Principal Investigator. Tactical Behavior, Coordination, and Obfuscation under Extreme Uncertainty. Army Research Lab. Team: Gregory J. Stein, Daigo Shishika, Xuan Wang, and Xuesu Xiao. Dates: 12/1/2024–11/30/2028. $1,670,000 (Share 25%: $417,500). , 12/1/2024–11/30/2028
12/15/2023–8/17/2024 Key Personel. Full-Spectrum Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Innovation and Integration. USAF, AFMC. Dates: 12/15/2023–8/17/2024. $4,910,000 (Key Personnel, Share 0%). , 12/15/2023–8/17/2024
6/1/2023–5/31/2026 Principal Investigator. Fast and Reliable Online Retraining and Adaptation for Robot Planning Despite Missing World Knowledge. National Science Foundation. Dates: 6/1/2023–5/31/2026. $499,481 (Share 100%: $499,481). , 6/1/2023–5/31/2026
| Name | Expected Graduation | My Role |
|---|---|---|
| Abhishek Paudel | SP26 | Advisor |
| Raihan Islam Arnob | SP26 | Advisor |
| Roshan Dhakal | SP26 | Advisor |
| Hoang-Dung Bui | SP26 | Advisor |
| Arnab Debnath | SP26 | Co-Advisor (with Jana Košecká) |
| Abhish Khanal | FA26 | Advisor |
| MD Ridwan Hossain Talukder | SP27 | Advisor |
| Philip Baldoni | SP27 | Advisor (part time) |
| Mohamed Agzhal | SP28 | Co-Advisor (with Ziyu Yao) |
| Nathaniel Mack | SP30 | Advisor (part time) |
| Term | Course | # Students |
|---|---|---|
| SP25 | CS682: Computer Vision Online/Pre-Recorded | 47 |
| FA24 | CS485/ECE370 (cross-list) Autonomous Robotics | 36 |
| SP24 | CS482: Computer Vision (UGrad) | 61 |
| FA23 | CS695: Decision Making & Reinforcement Learning | 36 |
| SP23 | CS482: Computer Vision (UGrad) | 60 |
| FA22 | CS685: Autonomous Robotics | 18 |
| SP22 | CS695: Foundations of Planning | 27 |
| FA21 | CS682: Computer Vision (Grad) | 7 |
| SP21 | CS482: Computer Vision (UGrad) | 44 |
| FA20 | CS682: Computer Vision (Grad) | 19 |
| PhD Committee (Member), FY2025 |
| MS-CS Committee (Member), FY2024 |
| MS-CS Committee (Member), FY2023, switched from PhD committee during `busy season' |
| PhD Committee (Member), FY2023 |
| CS Tenure-Track Hiring Committee (Member), FY2022 |
| MS-CS Committee (Member), FY2021 |
| Abhish Khanal, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY25 |
| Aniket Datar, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY25 |
| Mohammad Nazeri, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY25 |
| Chenhui Pan, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY24 |
| Amir Raj, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY24 |
| Raihan Islam Arnob, CS PhD, Proposal Defense, AY24 |
| Navid Rajabi, CS PhD, Thesis Defense, AY24 |
| Michael Crawshaw, CS PhD, Proposal Defense, AY24 |
| Abhishek Paudel, CS PhD, Proposal Defense, AY24 |
| Hoang-Dung Bui, CS PhD, Proposal Defense, AY24 |
| Mohamed Aghzal, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY24 |
| Minh Duc Nguyen, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY24 |
| Dibyendu Das, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY24 |
| Arnab Debnath, CS PhD, Proposal Defense, AY24 |
| Joseph Prince Matthew, ECE PhD, PhD Defense, AY24 |
| Roshan Dhakal, CS PhD, Thesis Proposal, AY23 |
| Changyang Li, CS PhD, Thesis Defense, AY23 |
| Kevin Murray, CS PhD, Thesis Defense, AY23 |
| Navid Rajabi, CS PhD, Thesis Proposal, AY23 |
| Anuj Pokhrel, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Gaurab Pokharel, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Abhish Khanal, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Yimeng Lee, CS PhD, Thesis Defense, AY23 |
| Kyle L. Jackson, CS PhD, Thesis Defense, AY23 |
| Yimeng Lee, CS PhD, Thesis Proposal, AY23 |
| Kyle L. Jackson, CS PhD, Thesis Proposal, AY23 |
| Joseph Prince Matthew, ECE PhD, PhD Proposal Defense, AY23 |
| Md. Ridwan Hossain Talukder, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Raihan Islam Arnab, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Dzung Bui, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Philip Baldoni, CS PhD, Comprehensive Exam, AY23 |
| Kyle L. Jackson, CS PhD, Pre-Defense, AY23 |
| Yimeng Li, PhD, Comprehensive Exam Committee, AY22 |
| Roshan Dhakal, PhD, Comprehensive Exam Committee, AY22 |
| Abhishek Paudel, PhD, Comprehensive Exam Committee, AY22 |
| Arnab Debnath, PhD, Comprehensive Exam Committee, AY22 |
| Yimeng Li, PhD, Dissertation Proposal Committee, AY22 |
| Michael Crawshaw, PhD, Comprehensive Exam Committee, AY21 |
Director/Co-Director: Autonomous Robotics Lab Fall 2022–Present. In my role as lab director, I am an ambassador of robotics research and regularly give tours for interested students or visitors.
Served on College-Level AI Working Group Served as AI/Robotics expert to discuss integration of generative AI into Mason's research and curriculum. Fall 2024
Mentored 3 High-School Summer Interns Students hosted in the RAIL Group, recruited via the GMU ASSIP program. Summer 2025
Mentored 4 High-School Summer Interns Students hosted in the RAIL Group, recruited via the GMU ASSIP program. Summer 2024
Reviewed 1 application for IDIA Faculty Fellowship Fall 2023
Reviewed 2 applications for IDIA Pre-Doc Fellowship Fall 2023
Mentored 4 High-School Summer Interns Students hosted in the RAIL Group, recruited via the GMU ASSIP program. Summer 2023
Advisor for MS/ECE Capstone Project Served as faculty-advisor a large Capstone project, a requirement for MS/ECE undergraduates, consisting of a 5 student sub-team (specific to the Vision sub-team, which I co-led) and provided guidance and instruction for the large ( 15 student) full team. AY2022
Mentored 3 High-School Summer Interns Students hosted in the RAIL Group, recruited via the GMU ASSIP program., Summer 2022
External Reader + PhD Defense Service, Christopher Bradley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
External Reader + PhD Defense Service, W. Nicholas Greene, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis Committee Member + PhD Defense Service, Raj Korpan, City University of New York
IEEE Big Data Workshop on Multimodal AI 2025 Program Committee Member & Reviewer, Dec 2025
Co-Organizer, Learning Effective Abstractions for Planning Workshop at CoRL Co-Organized Workshop at the Conference at Robot Learning, October 2025, Co-organized with Naman Shah, Tom Silver, Utkarsh Mishra, Luci Shi, Beomjoon Kim, and Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Program Committee Member, AAMAS 2026 Reviewed 8 papers.
Associate Editor, ICRA 2026 Assigned 10 papers.
Reviewer (2025) Reviewer for RSS, IROS, T-ASE, CASE, CoRL, ICRA
IEEE Big Data Workshop on Multimodal AI 2024 Program Committee Member & Reviewer, Dec 2024
IROS Session Co-Chair, Oct 2024
Mentored 4 High-School AI Final Projects Students were from the Ideaventions Academy. June 2024
Meta-Reviewer for RSS Pioneers Managed 4 applications
Associate Editor, ICRA 2025 Assigned 7 papers.
Reviewer (2024) Reviewer for RSS, ICSR, T-ASE, RA-L, ICRA
IEEE Big Data Workshop on Multimodal AI 2023 Program Committee Member & Reviewer, Dec 2023
Reviewer (2023) Reviewer for ICLR, CoRL, ICRA, RSS Pioneers
Contributed to the National Robotics Roadmap Attended a workshop at Penn to contribute to the next National Robotics Roadmap. Sep 2023
Mentored 2 High-School AI Final Projects Students were from the Ideaventions Academy. May 2023
IROS Session Co-Chair, Oct 2023
Reviewer (2022) Reviewer for ICLR, IROS, CoRL, IEEE Intelligent Systems
NSF Review Panelist Served on an NSF review panel for the CISE directorate.
Conference on Robot Learning Co-Organized Workshop, Dec 2022 Title: Learning, Perception, and Abstraction for Long-Horizon Planning, Co-organized with Rohan Chitnis, Yezhou Yang, Tom Silver, and Jana Košecká
IEEE Big Data Workshop on Multimodal AI 2022 Program Committee Member & Reviewer, Dec 2022
Reviewer (2021) Reviewer for CoRL, NeurIPS, ICLR, RA-L
ICRA Session Co-Chair, May 2021
Reviewer (2020) Reviewer for top conferences: ICLR, CoRL, ICRA, RSS
MIT EECS Communication Lab Communication Advisor, Aug 2016 – Dec 2019. Coached over 100 MIT students in 1-on-1 sessions to improve their technical communication.
MIT Resources for Easing Friction and Stress Peer Counselor, Jan 2017 – Dec 2019. Counseled students across the EECS department on mental wellness and managing stress.
Princeton CITP Workshops on AI and Ethics Invitee, Mar 2018 & Nov 2018. Invited as a technical expert at the intersection of AI, Machine Learning, and Robotics to participate in two workshops on AI and Ethics co-organized by the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy.
MIT EECS Visiting Committee Graduate Student Body Co-organizer, Feb 2017. Prepared report and made recommendations for how to improve student wellness and advising quality to panel of experts, reflecting two months of surveys, interviews, and town-hall meetings.
MIT EECS Graduate Student Association Board Member, Dec 2015 – Dec 2016. Elected Communications Vice President by peers for organization representing 630 graduate students; Co-organized week-long orientation for 120 EECS graduate students.
For a full list of publications, see our publications page.