Autonomous Systems Group

Meredith Albers joined the Center for Autonomy in 2023 as a Technical Project Manager, bringing over a decade of experience in grant and contract management. She focuses on optimizing processes to enhance the accessibility, transparency, and impact of program data. Meredith holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Texas A&M University and a Master’s degree in Technical Communication from Texas Tech University.

Yigit Ege Bayiz began his graduate research assistantship in the Autonomous Systems group in Fall 2020. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University in Turkey, and he is currently working towards a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His current research interests are online learning and decision-making in adversarial environments.

Neel Bhatt is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Autonomy and a part of the Autonomous Systems Group and the VITA Research Group working with Professors Ufuk Topcu and Atlas Wang at the University of Texas at Austin. Neel’s research is centered at the intersection of generative AI, assured active perception, prediction, and trustworthy sequential decision making for autonomous systems. Neel received his PhD in Mechatronics Engineering from University of Waterloo in 2023 where his research was focused at the intersection of perception, state estimation, prediction, and decision making for autonomous driving. During his PhD, he led efforts on the WATonoBus project at MVS Lab working on software and algorithmic development of perception and prediction modules required for Canada’s first autonomous shuttle bus approved via the ministry’s autonomous vehicle pilot. Prior to this, Neel received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering with focus on Mechatronics and Robotics from University of Toronto in 2018.

Shenghui (Vivian) Chen is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. from the University of Virginia in 2021, where she studied computer science and mathematics. Her current research focuses on human-agent interaction, human-centered AI, and game theory.

Christian Ellis is a joint postdoctoral researcher with the Army Research Laboratory and the UT Center for Autonomy focused on building safe and robust algorithms for autonomous systems which can operate in environments beyond were they were trained. His research interests include safe inverse reinforcement learning, environmental uncertainty quantification, open world learning, test and evaluation, and formal verification. Resulting publications provide applied solutions to real world autonomous systems. Christian received both a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2024 for his dissertation titled, "Terrain Aware Autonomous Ground Navigation in Unstructured Environments Informed by Human Demonstrations," and a B.S. in Computer Science: Software Engineering in 2019 from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Kushagra Gupta is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin; his research interests lie at the intersection of control, learning and games for robotics. Prior to starting graduate studies, Kushagra earned his B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2023. He is co-advised by Dr. Ufuk Topcu, Dr. David Fridovich-Keil, and Dr. Sandeep Chinchali.

Jaehan Im is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering , co-advised by Dr. Ufuk Topcu and Dr. David Fridovich-Keil. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from KAIST, South Korea. His research focuses on decentralized and noncooperative coordination in multi-agent systems, air traffic management, and safety-critical human-autonomy interaction.

Tyler is a fourth year PhD student working with Dr. Topcu. Tyler previously studied computer engineering at Iowa State University, with undergraduate research in computer vision and reinforcement learning. Tyler has ongoing research in transfer learning, especially as it pertains to reinforcement learning, robotics, and generative modeling.

Mustafa O. Karabag is a postdoctoral fellow in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Mustafa received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023. His research focuses on developing theory and algorithms to control the information flow of autonomous systems to succeed in information-scarce or adversarial environments.

Cevahir Koprulu is a Ph.D. student at the decision, information, and communication engineering track of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2021, he earned his B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. His research interests are reinforcement learning and curriculum learning under multi-task settings. Cevahir spends his free time on walls bouldering.

Po-han Li entered the PhD program in fall 2021. Prior to that, he was an undergraduate student in Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University. His research interests focus on post-training multimodal machine learning systems. He is co-advised by Dr. Sandeep Chinchali.

Xinjie Liu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Xinjie is very fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Ufuk Topcu and Prof. David Fridovich-Keil. His research interests lie in developing theoretical foundations and practical algorithms for decision making and control in autonomous systems under uncertainty. He is currently focused on (i) efficient and scalable reinforcement learning through principled integration of data from multiple sources, and (ii) intelligent and safe interaction for multi-agent systems, such as robots operating in shared environments. The majority of his work draws on reinforcement learning, numerical optimization, game theory, and statistical estimation and inference.

Surya Murthy is a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a member of the Autonomous Systems Group. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His research focuses on developing learning frameworks that enable autonomous agents to cooperate, adapt, and align objectives in multi-task and multi-agent settings. His recent work explores bargaining-based optimization methods for multi-objective reinforcement learning, modeling human preferences from feedback, and coordination mechanisms for large-scale autonomous systems.

Alexander Nettekoven is a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for Autonomy at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the development and deployment of general-purpose robotic systems in real-world environments. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UT Austin in 2022, where he also completed his M.Sc. Prior to that, he received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from RWTH Aachen University in Germany.

Alex's research interests include the development and deployment of general-purpose robotic systems in real-world environments, such as vision-language-action models for robotic manipulation.

Caleb Probine is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computational Science, Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Caleb received his BE (Hons) from the University of Auckland in 2023, and his current research interests are in reinforcement learning.

Quentin Rommel began his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering in 2023. He is co-advsived by Dr. Ufuk Topcu and Dr. Srinivas V Bettadpur. In Quentin's current research, he works on autonomous agents for space applications, exploring diverse environments ranging from low Earth orbits to Cislunar space.

Brian M. Sadler is a Senior Research Fellow at UT-Austin. From 2016 to 2024 he was the Senior Research Scientist for Intelligent Systems at the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL). At ARL he was a science executive, advisor, research portfolio and program manager, and principal investigator focused on AI/ML for multi-agent autonomous systems, networking, and signal processing. 

He has been an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for the Signal Processing and Communications Societies and an associate or guest editor for a variety of publications including the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, International Journal of Robotics Research, Autonomous Robots, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. He has 500 publications in these areas with more than 21,000 citations with H-index of 64, and 8 patents. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ARL Fellow.

Sichang Su is a Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, co-advised by Dr. Thinh Doan and Dr. Ufuk Topcu. She holds a MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, and a BEng in Engineering Mechanics from Zhejiang University. Her research interests lie in reinforcement learning and robotics, with a recent focus on developing robotic generalist policies.

Adam Thorpe is a postdoctoral researcher at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his PhD at the University of New Mexico in 2023. Adam's research interests are in the area of data-driven and learning-based control, with applications to humans and autonomy, space systems, and robotics.

Karissa Vail graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies and English in 2018. Karissa subsequently began working as an administrator in offices across the University of Texas at Austin, including the Dean's Office at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the College of Education's Research Administration Office, where she developed a strong interest in research administration. She joined the Oden Institute’s team as a Research Administrator in 2022. In her free time, Karissa enjoys reading, writing, attending concerts, and spending time with her two cats at home.

Arda Vurankaya is a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. Previously, he received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul. 

William Ward is a Research Engineer working with Dr. Ufuk Topcu as a member of the Autonomous Systems Group. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2025 with a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering. Prior to this, he graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 2023 with a Bachelor's of Science in Engineering Physics. His research interests include controls, autonomy, and robotics

Yunhao Yang is a Ph.D. student in computer science at The University of Texas at Austin. He started his Ph.D. program in Fall 2022. Prior to this, he received B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science, and a B.A. in mathematics from UT Austin. He is currently a member of the Center for Autonomy, supervised by Prof. Ufuk Topcu. His research centers on integrating foundation models with formal methods into autonomous system control, with broader interests in AI safety, reliability, and privacy.

Ruihan (Philip) Zhan is pursuing a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research directions include deep reinforcement learning, computer vision, and robotics. Before joining UT, Ruihan completed his Bachelor and Masters degree in Computer Science at UC Berkeley.