Current Postdocs
| Name | Started | Current Position |
|---|---|---|
| Tobias Löw | 2026 |
Current PhD Students
| Name | Co-advisor | Thesis | Started |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milad Mesbahi | 2026 | ||
| Ethan Pronovost | 2024 | ||
| Yunchu Zhang | Abhishek Gupta | 2023 | |
| Sidharth Talia | 2022 | ||
| Helen Wang | Dieter Fox | 2022 |
Alumni
Alumni Postdocs
| Name | Period | Current Position |
|---|---|---|
| Taylor Kessler Faulkner | 2022-2024 | Assistant Professor @ University of Washington |
| Christoforos Mavrogiannis | 2019-2023 | Assistant Professor @ Michigan |
| Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee | 2017-2021 | Assistant Professor @ Cornell |
| Fereshteh Sadeghi | 2018-2019 | Research Scientist @ DeepMind |
| Matthew Barnes | 2018-2019 | Researcher @ Google |
| Sanjiban Choudhury | 2018-2019 | Assistant Professor @ Cornell |
| Daqing Yi | 2016-2018 | Researcher @ Google |
| Henny Admoni | 2015-2017 | Associate Professor @ CMU |
| Oren Salzman | 2016-2017 | Assistant Professor @ Technion |
| Aaron Johnson | 2015-2016 | Professor @ CMU |
| Prasanna Velagapudi | 2012-2014 | CTO @ Agility |
Alumni PhD Students
| Name | Co-advisor | Thesis | Period | Current Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Schmittle | Off-Road Navigation Under Sensing Uncertainty | 2018-2025 | Researcher @ Overland AI | |
| Amal Nanavati | Maya Cakmak | Towards In-Home Deployments of Physically Assistive Robots: Insights from Robot-Assisted Feeding for People with Motor Impairments | 2019-2025 | Researcher @ Zoox |
| Liyiming Ke | Abhishek Gupta | Teach Robot to Use Chopsticks: a Test Bed for Robotic Learning via Fine Manipulation | 2017-2024 | Researcher @ Physical Intelligence |
| William Agnew | Human Priors for Reinforcement Learning | 2017-2023 | Postdoc @ CMU | |
| Ethan Gordon | Tractably Adaptable Food Manipulation for Robot-Assisted Feeding | 2018-2023 | Postdoc @ Penn | |
| Patrick Lancaster | Josh Smith | Towards Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation via Electrostatic Braking and Pre-touch Sensing | 2014-2022 | Postdoc @ Meta |
| Samuel Ainsworth | Perspectives on Policy Learning | 2016-2022 | Researcher @ Waymo | |
| Brian Hou | Robot Motion Planning with Uncertainty and Urgency | 2016-2022 | Researcher @ Aurora | |
| Sherdil Niyaz | Optimizing the Design of Robot Environments via Interleaved Optimization and White-Box Motion-Planning | 2017-2022 | Researcher @ Waymo | |
| Aditya Vamsikrishna | Efficient Robot Motion Planning in Cluttered Environments | 2016-2021 | Researcher @ Aurora | |
| Gilwoo Lee | Scalable Bayesian Reinforcement Learning | 2015-2020 | Founder @ Zordi | |
| Zita Marinho | Geoff Gordon | Moment-based Algorithms for Structured Prediction | 2012-2018 | Research Scientist @ DeepMind |
| Laura Herlant | Algorithms and Implementation and Studies on Eating with a Shared Control Robot Arm | 2013-2018 | Director of Robot Perception @ Robotics and AI Institute | |
| Stefanos Nikolaidis | Mathematical Models of Adaptation in Human-Robot Collaboration | 2014-2018 | Assistant Professor @ USC | |
| Shervin Javdani | Drew Bagnell | Acting under Uncertainty for Information Gathering and Shared Autonomy | 2011-2017 | Researcher @ Aurora |
| Christopher Dellin | Completing Manipulation Tasks Efficiently in Complex Environments | 2009-2016 | Roboticist @ Nuro | |
| Michael Koval | Nancy Pollard | Robust Manipulation via Contact Sensing | 2012-2016 | Researcher @ Waymo |
| Jennifer King | Robust Rearrangement Planning using Nonprehensile Interaction | 2012-2016 | Researcher @ Berkshire Grey | |
| Matt Klingensmith | Michael Kaess | Tracking and Calibrating Robot Arms using SLAM Techniques | 2013-2016 | Autonomy Engineer @ Wayve |
| Anca Dragan | Legible Robot Motion Planning | 2009-2015 | Associate Professor @ Berkeley | |
| Mehmet Dogar | A Framework for Manipulation in Cluttered Environments | 2008-2013 | Associate Professor @ Leeds | |
| Alvaro Collet | Martial Hebert | Lifelong Robotic Object Perception | 2009-2012 | VP Head of AI @ Stack AV |
| Dmitry Berenson | James Kuffner | Constrained Manipulation Planning | 2006-2011 | Associate Professor @ Michigan |
Alumni MS Students
| Name | Co-advisor | Thesis | Period | Current Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yuchen Yang | 2025-2026 | |||
| Atharva Pradhan | Insights from Developing a Robotic Bimanual Manipulation System | 2023-2025 | Engineer @ Third Wave Automation | |
| Jose Jaime | Extending Robot-Assisted Feeding to Spoon-Based Foods with the Articutool: A Modular Active End-Effector | 2023-2025 | Engineer @ Velodex AI | |
| Matthew Rockett | MuSHR: A Low-Cost, Open-Source Robotic Racecar for Education and Research | 2018-2020 | Engineer @ Zordi | |
| Colin Summers | Lyceum: An Efficient and Scalable Ecosystem for Robot Learning | 2018-2020 | ||
| Johan Michalove | MuSHR: A Low-Cost, Open-Source Robotic Racecar for Education and Research | 2017-2019 | PhD @ Cornell | |
| Jeongseok Lee | A Linear-Time Variational Integrator for Multibody Systems | 2016-2018 | Researcher @ Meta | |
| Shen Li | Stephanie Rosenthal | Automatically Evaluating and Generating Clear Robot Explanations | 2015-2017 | Ph.D. @ MIT |
| Rosario Scalise | Stephanie Rosenthal | Human-Centered Design of Robot Explanations | 2015-2017 | Ph.D. @ UW |
| Shushman Choudhury | Anytime Geometric Motion Planning on Large Dense Roadmaps | 2015-2017 | AI Software Engineer @ Google Research | |
| Pengju Jin | Highly Robust Pose Estimation from Single Frame RGBD | 2017-2017 | Researcher @ Aurora | |
| Aaron Walsman | ROCK: Robust Object Constellation for Kinematic Pose | 2013-2015 | Postdoc @ Harvard | |
| Evan Shapiro | A Hierarchical Framework for Configuration Space Task Planning | 2013-2015 | CEO @ Mina Foundation | |
| Elizabeth Cha | Jodi Forlizzi | Robots in the Home: Qualitative and Quantitative Insights into Kitchen Organization | 2012-2014 | Researcher @ Waymo |
| Kyle Strabala | Learning the Communication of Intent Prior to Physical Collaboration | 2010-2012 | Scientist @ Near Earth Autonomy | |
| Garratt Gallagher | Drew Bagnell | GATMO: A Generalized Approach to Tracking Movable Objects | 2007-2009 | Google Robotics |
| Martin Herrmann | Dr.-Inf. Uwe Hanebeck @ Universitat Karlsruhe | Active scene and object reconstruction for robotic manipulation from vision and laser | 2009-2009 | TU Braunschweig |