Autonomous Systems Group

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.

Dr. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Jaehan Im is a first year PhD student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering co-advised by Dr. Ufuk and Dr. David. He earned his BS and MS in the Aerospace Engineering Department from KAIST in South Korea. Im's 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. He 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. He 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 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 is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He 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.

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.

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

I am Quentin, starting my Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering in 2023. I am co-advsived by Dr. Ufuk Topcu and Dr. Srinivas V Bettadpur. In my current research, I work on autonomous agents for space applications, exploring diverse environments ranging from low Earth orbits to Cislunar space.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Ruihan (Philip) 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 got his bachelor and Masters degree in Computer Science at UC Berkeley.