Bio Snippet
Strategic Themes (Ikigai): Automatic Control ∩ Robotics ∩ Machine LEarning.
- Safety in decision-making: HJ equations, and constrained numerical algorithms.
- Machine learning (read: optimization) in control and planning: Self-aware, situationally-aware systems (e.g. physical robots, augmented, and virtual reality agents) that self-organize by systemic constraints (read: not imposed objectives).
- Emergent embodied intelligence via morphological computation in modern and futuristic robotic systems (including soft robots and deformables): finite reduced-order, fractional, and learned models, ode- and pde-based control, time-scale separation of heterogeneous dynamics, and layered control.
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
Could we be at the precipice of continum soft robots that mimic the behavior of functional living organisms being versatile shoo-in for everyday robotic automation tasks? My new paper argues for and demonstrates the efficacy of a decentralized continuum dynamical system whose whole-body strain dynamics is resolved in an adaptive and hierarchical nonlinear control fashion. | September 30, 2024 |
Recent giving a talk at McGill's Mechanical Engineering and MILA</a>, on a layered architecture and time-scale separation control scheme in the quest towards the real-time control of heterogeneous soft robotics devices. | October 31, 2024 |
Will you be at the next ICRA conference? I am but a weave within the rich tapestry of excellent leaders in the soft robotics community, fashioned together to disseminate the latest findings -- new hardware fabrics, mathematical/ML models, and control tools -- in a workshop on biologically-inspired embodied intelligence for modern robots and devices. Please see the workshop webpage for details. | August 24, 2024 |
Two papers accepted to CDC 2024, Milan! | August 27, 2024 |
Please join the crescendo of ecstatic congratulations to Dr. Anurag Koul, a former postdoc in our lab and a close collaborator, who is transitioning his academic career into an applied scientist role at Amazon NYC. Bravissimo! | August 8, 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! | August 5, 2024 |
Raising a cheer of congratulations to Dr. Shaoru Chen, a former postdoc in our lab and collaborator, who recently |
August 3, 2024 |
Organizing an MSR-wide workshop in Redmond, WA for folks working on group theory applications for model and policy and representation in modern learning algorithms. | February 24, 2024 |
Recent presentation at Yale University based on our mixed H2/H-infinity stochastic RL policy optimization analysis. | November 2, 2023 |
Mentoring Activities.
I enjoy working with/mentoring young students/scientists in teaching and research capacities alike. Before MSFT, I was an adjunct faculty at Brandeis up in Waltham, MA. Current or past students, interns and postdocs include:
- Leilei Cui (advised by Dr. Zhong-Ping Jiang). MSR Intern, 2022 → NYU Engineering PhD → Posdoctoctoral Scholar, MIT.
- Abulikemu Abuduweili. CMU Robotics PhD student → MSR Intern 2024; being co-advised together with Elise van der Pol, Qiuyuan Huang, and Naoki Wake.
- Anurag Koul, Oregon State University, Microsoft Research Postdoc, 2022 - 2024. Present: Senior Research Scientist, Amazon NYC.
- Gilbert Bahati, Caltech Mechanical Engineering PhD Student (Advised by Dr. Aaron Ames).
- Harry Vuong. Brandeis University MS 2020/2021 → Robotic Systems Engineer, Universal Robots A/S.
- Harley Wiltzer, Microsoft Research Intern, 2023. McGill PhD Student advised by David Meger and Marc Bellemare.
- Thomas Zhang, Microsoft Research Intern, 2023. UPenn PhD Student advised by Nik Matni.
- 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 → Microsoft Undergraduate Research Intern, 2023.
- Ajith Venkateswaran, 2016-2017 Masters Intern → Amazon Robotics LLC → University of Texas at Dallas → Senior Software Engineer, Johnson & Johnson.
- Blessing Kolawole, Undergrad Assistant. (CS PhD student, Tufts University).
- Shaoru Chen. Penn ESE, University of Pennsylvania → Microsoft Research Postdoc (2023-?).
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, Oct 31, 2024.