Our Leadership Team
Willa Potosnak
Willa Potosnak is a Ph.D. student at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute (RI). She is currently researching Machine Learning (ML) and statistical methods to improve Forecasting algorithms. Among her research goals are to improve ML methods used to aid intervention and treatment decision making in healthcare.
From a young age, she aspired to contribute to improving healthcare technology. She was first introduced to Robotics research at Duquesne University for a project which incorporated 3-D printing and Arduino to improve assistive technology. Through participation in the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute Summer Scholars (RISS) program, she became increasingly fascinated with the potential of Machine Learning and its application within Robotics, particularly for healthcare. Her experience as a Citizen Science Lab instructor and a project lead of the CMU RI Outreach Website Team has shown her the impact access to resources can have on motivating middle and high school student interest in STEM. She aims to contribute to efforts that provide free STEM resources to students for the goal of creating a more accessible and diverse Robotics community.
Jasmine Jerry Aloor
Jasmine Jerry Aloor is a fifth-year undergraduate majoring in Aerospace Engineering and minoring in Computer Science pursuing a Dual Degree (Bachelor’s and Master’s) program at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She works in the Air Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) under the mentorship of Dr. Sebastian Scherer and Dr. Jean Oh. Her first introduction to robotics was through participation in her Institute’s RoboSoccer RoboCup student team in her first year of undergraduate studies. Jasmine was part of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute Summer Scholar Program (RISS) in 2021. Her research interests include motion planning and control for dynamic multi-agent systems, emphasizing safety, robustness, and human interactivity.
She is inspired by human capability in making complex reasoning and planning tasks and hopes to make autonomous agents learn these from humans. After graduating, she will pursue a doctoral degree in autonomous systems and decision making at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics starting in Fall 2022.
Kaleb Ben Naveed
Kaleb Ben Naveed is a senior at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University majoring in electronic and information engineering. Kaleb was part of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute Summer Scholar Program (RISS) 2020 and 2021. He worked with Dr. John Dolan in Argo AI Center for autonomous vehicle research and Dr. Sebastian Scherer in AirLab. Kaleb is interested in the areas of robotic decision-making and planning under uncertainty. He is highly inspired by human beings’ ability to continuously learn and improve their behaviors in the ever-changing world to maximize productivity and thus wants to develop algorithms to help robots develop similar cognitive skills. Kaleb belongs to the minority group from Punjab, Pakistan, and wants to contribute to his community through technology.
Rutav Shah
Rutav Shah is a fourth year undergraduate majoring in Computer Science and Engineering enrolled in its B.Tech program at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He got the first opportunity to explore Robotics at Autonomous Ground Vehicle, a student run group at IIT Kharagpur during the freshman year. For his undergraduate thesis, he is co-advised by Prof. Abir Das (Computer Vision and Intelligence Research Lab at IIT Kharagpur) and Dr. Vikash Kumar (FAIR Pittsburgh). He also got the opportunity to work Prof. Abhinav Gupta at CMU as part of the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute Summer Scholar Program (RISS) in 2021. His research interests lie broadly in Robotics and Machine Learning. He is interested in building autonomous agents that can acquire complex behaviors in unstructured, un-instrumented settings like home, hospital, etc., with little to no human intervention. Rutav will be pursuing his Ph.D. from Fall’22 at the Robot Perception and Learning lab, University of Texas at Austin.
Conner Pulling
Conner Pulling is a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University majoring in Robotics & Mechatronics and minoring in Computer Science. He was involved with FIRST robotics in high school, which was influential in inspiring his continued fascination with robots. Conner’s involvement with NASA summer programs throughout high school, such as VSCS and VASTS, also cultivated a passion for space exploration. Combining an interest in robotics and space, He worked at NASA during Summer 2020 on alignment detection using computer vision and deep learning for In-Space Assembly (ISA) missions. The following summer, he participated in the Robotic Institute Summar Scholars (RISS) program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) under Dr. Sebastian Scherer and Dr. Yaoyu Hu at the AirLab working on depth perception using novel deep learning multiview stereo vision modela. During this time, his interest in field robotics and perception research grew and he saw how with more accurate and faster robotic perception algorithms, robots will be able to better help people in uncertain environments such as in space and urban evironments. Conner will be pursuing his Masters in Robotics at CMU in Fall 2022 with the AirLab and under the guidance of Dr. Scherer.
Arnab Dey
Arnab Dey is a second-year undergraduate student and Stamps Presidential Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology, majoring in Biomedical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science and Health and Medical Sciences. He conducts machine learning research in the healthcare space with the Auton Lab at Carnegie Mellon University under the guidance of Dr. Artur Dubrawski and Mononito Goswami. During the summer of 2021, Arnab was a Robotics Institute Summer Scholar (RISS) at CMU. There, he had the amazing opportunity to conduct research on weakly supervised methods to adjudicate clinical physiologic monitoring alarms as real or artifact under the mentorship of Dr. Dubrawski and Mononito. Arnab is broadly interested in leveraging machine learning for the prediction, detection, and treatment of diseases and betterment of public health, but even more passionate about teaching and inspiring the younger generation!
Rachel Burcin
Oliver Kroemer
Dr. Oliver Kroemer is an assistant professor at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Robotics Institute where he leads the Intelligent Autonomous Manipulation Lab. His research focuses on developing algorithms and representations to enable robots to learn versatile and robust manipulation skills. Before joining CMU, Dr. Kroemer was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California (USC) for two and a half years. He received his Masters and Bachelors degrees in engineering from the University of Cambridge in 2008. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. He defended his Ph.D. thesis on Machine Learning for Robot Grasping and Manipulation in 2014 at the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt.
Max Likhachev
Maxim Likhachev is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, directing Search-based Planning Laboratory (SBPL). His group at CMU researches heuristic search, decision-making and planning algorithms, all with applications to the control of robotic systems including unmanned ground and aerial vehicles, mobile manipulation platforms, humanoids, and multi-robot systems. Maxim obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University with a thesis called “Search-based Planning for Large Dynamic Environments.” He has over 150 publications in top journals and conferences on AI and Robotics and numerous paper awards. His work on Anytime D* algorithm, an anytime planning algorithm for dynamic environments, has been awarded the title of Influential 10-year Paper at International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS) 2017, the top venue for research on planning and scheduling. Other awards include selection for 2010 DARPA Computer Science Study Panel that recognizes promising faculty in Computer Science and being on a team that won 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge and on a team that won the Gold Edison award in 2013. Maxim founded RobotWits, a company devoted to developing advanced planning and decision-making technologies for self-driving vehicles and recently acquired by Waymo, and co-founded TravelWits, an online travel tech company that brings AI to make travel logistics easier. Finally, Maxim is an executive co-producer of regional Emmy-nominated The Robot Doctor TV series aimed at showing the use of mathematics in Robotics and inspiring high-school students to pursue careers in science and technology.
Manash Pratim Das
Manash Pratim Das completed his Master of Science in Robotics in 2022 from Carnegie Mellon University. He was a part of the Search-based Planning Laboratory and was advised by Dr. Maxim Likhachev. He worked in the area of path planning to allow autonomous vehicles to navigate complex off-road terrains. Before his stay at Carnegie Mellon University, he completed his undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Next, he is going to join Apple for his next endeavor.