About

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University, where I direct the Autonomous Systems Laboratory. I am also an Amazon Scholar with Amazon Robotics. I received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 2010 under the supervision of Prof. Richard Murray. My research interests lie in the broad area of computer science, control, and optimization, with a particular focus on formal methods, motion planning, hybrid systems, and distributed control systems. Most of my work involves applying mathematical and computational rigor to solve concrete, real-world problems, especially in autonomy, robotics, and transportation. My career has spanned both academia and industry. In particular, I was a principal research scientist and led the planning team at nuTonomy (now Motional). As one of the earliest employees, I was heavily involved in the whole software development and release process, from design (interfaces and modules) to implementation (C++ and python), testing, evaluation, and deployment. My work focused on planning, decision making, control, behavior specification, and validation of autonomous vehicles. I also led the Systems Team for Team Caltech in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge during my Ph.D.

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