Welcome to my web presence. I am a Senior Researcher in Microsoft Research Core – New York City. My research efforts span the complete ideation gamut of conceptualization, rigorous theoretical analysis, to abundant empirical and embodied proof-of-concept. I am a part of the robotics steering committee out of the embodied AI research efforts between various cross-geographic teams throughout the company. Most of what I do as a researcher and the questions that keep me up at night can be found here on my research page.
Research Chronology
- Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Lab (NYC), 2021 - Present.
- Adjunct Faculty, Brandeis University, Graduate School of Professional Studies, (2019 - 2021).
- Postdoctoral Researcher, The University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine (2019 - 2021).
- Postdoctoral Scholar, The University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine (2019).
- Research Intern (Robot Learning), Preferred Networks, Tokyo, Japan (Ended 2018).
- Mechatronics Intern, Amazon Robotics (Advanced Robotics Lab), Greater Boston, MA (2016).
- Student, The University of Texas at Dallas, School of Engineering (2014 - 2019).
- Visiting Student, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Medical Physics and Engineering (2014 - 2019).
- Student, The University of Sheffield, Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (Ended 2012/2013).
Select News Highlights
Check out this sizzling hot complete and unabridged commentary on some of my recent research efforts surrounding safety and robustness in decision-making by autonomous systems and soft robots modeling and control. | April 9, 2025 |
Entertain your mind reading this newly accepted ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) journal article. It describes our GPU-accelerated Levelsetpy safety analyses software package. | April 7, 2025 |
Towards fast strain regulation in continuum robots, in this new ACC 2025 paper we argue for and demonstrate the efficacy of a decentralized continuum dynamical system whose whole-body strain dynamics is resolved in an adaptive and hierarchical nonlinear control fashion. | March 30, 2025 |
Two papers accepted to the IEEE Control and Decision Conference, CDC 2024, Milano, Italia! Huzzah! | August 27, 2024 |
Together with Volker Pohl, I am co-chairing the computational methods in control theory at the next Conference on Decision and Control in Milan (December 2024). Evviva! | November 5, 2024 |
Mentoring Activities.
Previous interns, postdocs, and students include:
- Taylor Webb. MSR Postdoc, ‘24/25 → Princeton Neuroscience PhD; UCLA Postdoc → Assitant Professor, University de Montreal.
- Leilei Cui. MSR Intern, ‘22 → NYU Engineering PhD → Posdoctoctoral Scholar, MIT.
- Abulikemu Abuduweili. CMU Robotics PhD student → MSR Intern ‘24; co-advised by Elise van der Pol, and Naoki Wake.
- Thomas Zhang, MSR Intern, ‘23. UPenn PhD Student advised by Nik Matni.
- Gilbert Bahati, Caltech MechE PhD Student (Advised by Dr. Aaron Ames).
- Haoxiang You. Yale MAE PhD Student. Advised by Prof. Ian Abraham.
- Anurag Koul, Oregon State University, MSR Postdoc, ‘23-‘24. Present: Senior Research Scientist, Amazon NYC.
- Shaoru Chen. Penn ESE, University of Pennsylvania → MSR Postdoc (‘23-‘24) → LinkedIn ML Engineer.
- Harry Vuong. Brandeis University MS 2020/2021 → Robotic Systems Engineer, Universal Robots A/S.
- Harley Wiltzer, MSR Intern, 2023. McGill PhD Student advised by David Meger and Marc Bellemare.
- Adwait Kulkarn, 2017-2018 Masters intern → (VP of Smart Trailer Engineering, Drov. Tech, MN).
- Rachel Thompson, 2017 Plano High School → University of Texas as Dallas → MIT CSAIL undergrad → Brown University PhD.
- Etiosa Omeike. Princeton ECE Junior → MSR Undergrad. Intern, 2023.
- Ajith Venkateswaran, 2016-2017 Masters Intern → Amazon Robotics LLC → University of Texas at Dallas → Senior Software Engineer, Johnson & Johnson.
Select Talks, Classes, and Conferences
Talk Highlights
- Dynamics from Pixels as Time Integrations of Neural Lie Group Homomorphisms, MSR Game Intelligence Group, Cambridge, UK. Fall 2023.
- On the Robustness and Convergence of Policy Optimization in Continuous-Time Mixed H2/H-infinity Stochastic Control, Yale University Engineering/CS Faculty, New Haven, Conn. Fall 2023.
- Learning without Rewards, Microsoft Research Summit, Fall 2021.
- Automating Treatment Planning in Radiation Therapy, Microsoft Research NYC, New York City, Winter 2021.
- Automating Treatment Planning in Radiation Therapy, Auris Health, Johnson & Johnson, San Francisco, CA, 2021.
- Soft Robots-based Position Correction Mechanisms in Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy. Open Robotics Foundation, Mountain View, CA, USA, 2019.
- Robotic Radiotherapy: Automating Position Correction in Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy, Department of Energy Resources Engineering. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, 2018.
- Robotic Radiotherapy: Automating Position Correction in Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy, Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, 2018.
- Minimax Iterative Dynamic Game, Department of Brain Robot Interface. Computational Neuroscience Labs, ATR, Osaka, Japan, 2018.
- Soft Robotic Modules as Position Correcting Mechanisms in Cancer RT, 3rd Entrepreneurship Forum & Start-up Competition, EFSC’17, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2017.
- Neural Networks and Adaptive Control, Preferred Networks Tech. Talk, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. Japan, 2018.
Editorial/Community Services
- Mentee Lead, (Microsoft) Technology and Research (T&R) Mentoring Ring FY25, 2024 - 2025.
- Co-Coordinator, Reinforcement Learning Discussion Group Series, Microsoft Research, 2023 - 2024.
- Member, IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Committee on (i) Soft Robotics; (ii) Cognitive Robotics; (iii) Algorithms for Planning and Control; (iv) Automation in Health Care Management; (v) Aerial Robotics and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. 2023 - Present.
- Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Workshops, 2022-2023.
- Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020-2021.
- External Grants Reviewer, AI for Species Discovery, National Geographic Society, 2020 - 2021.
- Journal Reviewer: Automatica (IFAC – The International Federation of Automatic Control), IEEE Letters to Control Systems Society (L-CSS), IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (JBHI), Institute of Physics (IOP): The International Journal of Biomedical Physics and Engineering (PhysMed), IEEE Access, Neural Computing and Applications (NCAA).
- Conference Reviewer: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), IEEE/Robotics Society of Japan International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Dynamic Systems and Control Conference – The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (DSCC), American Control Conference (ACC), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), IFAC – World Congress, Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).
Classes and Useful Presentations
- A Short Treatise on the Kinematics and Kinetics of Robots – Slides, MSR NYC, 2022.
- The Mathematical Foundations of Robotics, Brandeis University, 2021.
- Robot Manipulation, Planning and Control, Brandeis University, 2020.
- L1 Adaptive Control – Courtesy of Naira Hovakimyan. 10/1/2015
Professional Activities.
- IEEE, Member.
- IEEE RAS, Robotics and Automation Society, Member.
- IEEE CSS, Control Systems Society, Member.
AAPM: The American Association of Physicists in Medicine, Junior Member.ASTRO, The American Society for Radiation Oncology, Member.NYAS, The New York Academy of Sciences, Member.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of the KOMs
As often as I can get away from the lab, I like to ride my (road/mountain/Grandma's) bike. I ride rain or shine, hell or highwater -- whether it's in the parching heats of sultry Texas, or the blustering cold winds of the Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard. States I have ridden so far include: NY, NJ, MA, NH, PA, DE, TX, IL, WI, IN, HI, WA. Below is a screenshot of my recent activities summary.
Recent Readings
Below are a list of books in my current reading list.
2024 Readings
- The Federalist – Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.
- The Startup Way – Eric Ries.
- No Ordinary Time, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II – Doris Kearns Goodwin.
- Successful Negotiating: Letting the Other Person Have Your way – Ginny Pearson Barnes.
- On Natural Selection – Charles Darwin.
- Isaac Asimov’s Caliban – Rober MacBride Allen.
- How to avoid a Climate Disaster – Bill Gates.
- A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens.
- True Compass – Edward Kennedy.
Oldies and Goodies
- Knowing Mandela – John Carlin.
- Democracy in America – Alexis De Toqueville.
- Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln – Doris Kearns Goodwin.
- The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway.
- John Adams – David McCullough.
The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela – Edited by Sham Venter.Mandela, The Authorized Biography – Anthony Sampson.1776 – David McCullough.Founding Fathers – Gordon Leidner.Managing Up – Rosanne Badowski.Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography – Richard Bellman.Advice for a Young Investigator – Santiago Ramon y Cajal.Richard Feynmann: A Life in Science – John and Mary Gribblin.Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath and Dan Heath.Profiles in Courage – John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
This web presence was last updated on Thu, Apr 24, 2025.