Welcome to SCUBA (Scaling Collaborative Unmanned roBots for Autonomy) lab at FAU’s Ocean and Mechanical Engineering department
I am an Assistant Professor in the Ocean and Mechanical Engineering Department at Florida Atlantic University(FAU). I am part of SeaTech at FAU. I head the SCUBA (Scaling Collaborative Unmanned roBots for Autonomy) Lab. Prior to this, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Minnesota Robotics Institute (MnRI) associated with the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Uniuversity of Minnesota Twin-Cities, I got my PhD in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2021. I got my MSc and BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities in 2016 and 2014, respectively.
My research is at the cusp of control theory and learning. My diverse background, that stems from Mechanical, Electrical and Computer Science engineering allows me to have a unique perspective to every problem I solve. I have extensive experience in software development for energy efficient connected vehicle applications, in distributed, stable and safe coordination of multi-robot systems and in applying learning methods to control robots for specific applications in agriculture, such as diseases detection in wheat crops using autonomous drones and weed termination in cow pastures using autonomous tractors. My work has been covered by several media houses, most recently by PBS and WDBJ7 network for research on agricultural robots and search and rescue operations, respectively.
Outside of research, I am involved with endurance sports. I completed my first marathon at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon 2022. My fascination for space travel lead me to obtain a PADI open water diver license as I think scuba diving is the closest thing to space walk and so I want to explore scuba diving and the under-water world, that is largely unseen.