Autonomous Systems Group

Dr. Bakirtzis is a postdoctoral fellow at the Oden Institute working within the Autonomous Systems Group. He is predominantly interested in problems that arise at the intersection of control, formal methods, and learning for safe and secure autonomy.

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.

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. I received my B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia in 2021. My current research interests include multi-agent systems, game theory, and human-autonomy interactions.

I'm a fourth-year PhD student who joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in Fall 2018. I received my B.S and M.S degrees in Aerospace Engineering from ISAE-SUPAERO, France, in 2018. I also received a M.S degree in Computer Science from \'Ecole polytechnique, France, in 2017. My current research interests include optimization in formal methods, control theory, learning with a priori knowledge, and reinforcement learning with provable guarantees.

I started my Ph.D. program at the University of Texas in Fall 2021. I am currently researching Symbolic AI. I am also interested in Formal Methods and Complex Systems.

Parham Gohari has been a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin since 2018. He majors in decisions, informations, and communications engineering and is affiliated with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His work focuses on protecting the data privacy of individuals in the cyber domain. Specifically, he is interested in discovering privacy vulnerabilities in autonomous decision making systems, and once he finds a vulnerability, he develops algorithms and theory to propose alternative privacy-preserving solutions. His favorite place to do research is wherever there is a piano.

I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering co-advised by Dr. Topcu and Dr. Tanaka. I earned my B.S. in engineering mechanics and astronautics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 and my M.S. in aerospace engineering from UT in 2020. Briefly, my research focuses on how autonomous agents should optimally behave when subject to information constraints and sensor limitations. I am particularly interested in applying these ideas to outer-space applications.

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 PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Autonomous Systems Group at The University of Texas at Austin. Mustafa received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and a minor degree in Economics from Bogazici University. His research focuses on decision-making for autonomous systems in adversarial or information-scarce settings.

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 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.

Cyrus Neary is pursuing a PhD in computational science, engineering, and mathematics within The Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to his PhD studies, Cyrus received a BASc degree in engineering physics with a minor in honors mathematics from The University of British Columbia. He is interested in studying how prior knowledge can be incorporated into reinforcement learning (RL) systems, and how such information may be used for the formal verification of said systems, particularly in the context of safety-critical engineering applications. His recent research has focused on compositional RL systems; complex (or multi-agent) systems are decomposed into their constituent components to simplify learning, while theoretical guarantees are developed to assure that compositions of such components satisfy system-level requirements.

I am Research Engineering/Scientist Associate at The Univeristy of Texas at Austin. I am responsible for our efforts to integrate some of the research our group produces into simulation and hardware. Specifically, I have worked mostly with implementing reactive systems in a surveillance and patrol context. My current work is focused on implementing control algorithms in the Urban Air Mobility space.

Dhananjay Raju received a B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Amrita University, India, in 2011 and a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Chennai Mathematical Institute, India, in 2014. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. His research focuses on the use of formal methods, game theory, and logic for the design and verification of autonomous systems.

Aryaman is a second-year Master's student pursuing his degree in Aerospace Engineering, with a specialization in Control, Autonomy and Robotics. He obtained his B.Tech. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, India in 2021. His research interests includes computer vision, autonomous systems and compositional reinforcement learning (RL). Aryaman's hobbies are playing soccer, hiking and travelling.

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

Qinshuang Wei is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Autonomous Systems Group at the University of Texas at Austin. She received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 2017, 2018, and 2022, where she also received the B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics in 2017. Her research interests include control systems, cyber-physical systems, and optimization.

Bio: I’m a PhD student in computer science at The University of Texas at Austin since 2022. I received my B.S and M.S degrees in computer science, and B.A in mathematics from UT Austin as well. My current research interests include connecting large language models to formal methods and privacy in machine learning models.

Yue Yu is a postdoctoral research scholar with the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2021, Yue obtained his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington. Yue's research develops decision-making capabilities for autonomous systems. It contributes to multiple research areas, including optimization, learning, control, game theory, and transportation.

My name is Ruihan Zhao. I'm a first-year Ph.D. student in the ECE department. My research interest is around Deep Reinforcement Learning, Computer Vision, and Robotics. Before UT, I finished my undergrad and MS at UC Berkeley. During my spare time, I like hiking and playing badminton.