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 management. Meredith specializes in grant forecasting and dashboard development to streamline processes and improve the accessibility and visibility of program data. She holds a Bachelor's degree in English from Texas A&M University and a Master’s degree in Technical Communication from Texas Tech University.

Arash Amini currently serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Autonomous System Group at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University in 2023. Arash's research revolves around controlling multi-agent systems, with application in robot swarms and social networks.

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 is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia in 2021. Shenghui's current research interests include multi-agent systems, game theory, and human-autonomy interactions.

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 first year PhD student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering co-advised by Ufuk Topcu and David Fridovich-Keil. Jaehan earned his BS and MS in the Aerospace Engineering Department from KAIST in South Korea. His research interests include decentralized control over multi-agent systems and a safety-critical human-autonomy interaction.

Tyler Ingebrand is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering advised by Dr. Topcu. Tyler previously received a B.S. in computer engineering from Iowa State University, and his research interests include machine learning, reinforcement learning, and data-driven control.

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.

Abhishek N. Kulkarni currently serves as a postdoctoral fellow at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences, University of Texas at Austin. Abhishek earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 2023. His research lies at the intersection of game theory, formal methods, and learning, with a specific emphasis on designing decision-making and control strategies for autonomous systems navigating strategic environments with incomplete information.

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 control and learning of network systems. He is co-advised by Dr. Sandeep Chinchali.

Xinjie Liu is a first-year 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 decision-making and control strategies for autonomous systems in dynamic and uncertain environments. He is currently focused on intelligent, safe interactions of robots with other agents and efficient robot control policy learning.

Surya Murthy is a master's student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began working as a graduate research assistant in the Autonomous Systems Group in the Fall of 2023. His research interests are reinforcement learning and multi-agent systems.

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.

Sophia Smith grew up in Eau Claire Wisconsin before attending the University of Chicago. There, she studied math and physics, graduating in 2021. Sophia's current research interests include autonomous systems.

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.

Nathan Tsao is a Ph.D student studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Nathan received a B.S. degree from the University of Chicago Urbana-Champaign in 2022.

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 M.S. student studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Central Arkansas in 2023, and his current research interests include reinforcement learning and autonomous control of robotic systems. 

Yunhao Yang is a PhD student in computer science at The University of Texas at Austin since 2022. Yunhao received his B.S and M.S degrees in computer science, and B.A in mathematics from UT Austin as well. His current research interests include connecting large language models to formal methods and privacy in machine learning models.

And Kaan Yilmaz is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. And Kaan received his BSc degree from Bogazici University (Electrical Engineering and Math /  2021) and MSc degree from University of California, San Diego  (Electrical and Computer Engineering / 2024). He is a Math enthusiast. His current research interest is in Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory and Multi-Agent Systems.

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.