Faculty

Byron Boots

Byron Boots is the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Washington where he directs the UW Robot Learning Laboratory. Byron has previously served as co-chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Robot Learning, and is looking forward to serving as the co-general chair for the Conference on Robot Learning in 2023. He has received several awards including "Best Paper" Awards from ICML, AISTATS, RSS, and IJRR and is also the recipient of the RSS Early Career Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Byron received his PhD from the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

PhD Students

Sandesh Adhikary

Sandesh Adhikary is a PhD student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. His research has been focused on quantum-inspired probabilistic models for sequential data. In particular, he has worked on understanding how these models relate to models from classical machine learning in terms of expressiveness and learnability. Additionally, he has also been working with kernel-based sampling methods, particularly when applied to problems that require sampling over non-Euclidean Riemannian manifolds. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Physics from Reed college, Portland, Oregon.

Adam Fishman

Adam Fishman is a fifth-year Computer Science PhD student in The Allen School at the University of Washington, where he is co-advised by Dieter Fox and Byron Boots. Currently, his research interests lie in end-to-end learning for closed-loop motion control in partially observable environments. Previously, he worked as a Computer Vision Engineer at Oculus VR. While there, he helped build the SLAM system for Oculus Quest. He likes to ride bikes, hike with his dog, and make pizza.

Yuxiang Yang

Yuxiang Yang is a PhD student in the CSE department, working with professor Byron Boots. His research aims to make robots actively perceive and interact with the external world, with a current focus on legged locomotion. Before UW, he received his Bachelor's degree in EECS at UC Berkeley and worked as a resident researcher in Robotics at Google.

Carolina Higuera Arias

Carolina Higuera is a Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering advised by Prof. Byron Boots. Her research focuses on developing models that allow robot manipulators capable of interpreting its world through tactile perception. She received her Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computers from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, and her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from UPTC, Colombia.

Rosario Scalise

Rosario is a PhD student in the Robot Learning Lab. He is interested in dynamic, robust, & resilient robots that adapt to the world around them. The goal of his research is to achieve these characteristics using tools from machine learning, motion planning, and adaptive control. Previously, he received BS degrees in EE/CompE from UConn and an MS from the Robotics Institute at CMU.

Tyler Han

Tyler Han is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Robot Learning Lab at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science. He is interested in performing research at the intersection of learning and control but hopes to become familiar with the whole robotics stack. Before coming to the University of Washington, Tyler received a dual degree in Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Maryland and conducted research in motor learning at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Kevin Huang

Kevin Huang is a PhD student at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, advised by Byron Boots. His research interests are broadly in applying reinforcement learning to dynamic, real-world environments with complex constraints. Previously, he received a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Caltech.

Sanghun Jung

Sanghun Jung is a Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, working with professor Byron Boots. His research interest lies in the intersection of robot perception and control, enabling robots and vehicles to perform robustly in unseen environments. Previously, he received his Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from KAIST and his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Korea University.

Mateo Guaman Castro

Mateo Guaman Castro is a Ph.D. student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, working with Prof. Byron Boots and Prof. Abhishek Gupta. He is interested in efficient and continually adaptive methods for real-world robot learning, at the intersection of representation learning, reinforcement learning, and controls. Previously, he received a Master’s degree in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University.

Rohan Baijal

Rohan Baijal is a PhD student in the Robot Learning Lab at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering advised by Prof. Byron Boots. His research aims to enable robots to perform tasks in complex settings, like off-road autonomy, cluttered environments and among humans, under uncertainty. His interests lie at the intersection of learning and planning but also hopes to get his hands dirty working on real robots. Prior to this, he was an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. When not buried under a pile of papers, he can be found playing guitar and bass (he loves all genres ranging from jazz to prog to funk and soul. Reach out to him to jam session some time!).

Master's Students

Rwik Rana

Rwik Rana is a graduate student coming from Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India. He is pursuing a Master's Degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. His interests lies in the field of perception, controls and motion planning of Mobile robots. Currently he is working in the perception team of UW Racer with Amirezza and is also part of the drones team with Alex and Guanya. Apart from academics, he loves football(soccer) and loves to play the piano. He is open to collaboration related to robotics in sports and music as well. Mirre robots dohaeris and May be the force be with him!

Alex Liu

Alex Liu is a Master's student in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Washington. His current research focuses on Bayesian inverse reinforcement learning and he works on the planning & controls team of the UW RACER project. Previously, Alex received his Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Neel Jawale

Neel is a graduate student in the Mechanical Department at UW, focusing on Robotics and Controls. He's passionate about merging Nonlinear Optimal Control and Robot Learning for reactive robot movement in unpredictable environments. Currently collaborating with Mohak Bhardwaj, Neel is working on enhancing sampling-based MPC techniques for smoother, faster, and reactive robot motion. When he's not navigating the daily grad school struggles, you can find him busting some hip-hop moves or enjoying theater in his free time.

Varich Boonsanong

Varich Boonsanong is a student in the BS/MS program at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Currently, he is working on enhancing planning with generative models for the UW RACER project. Outside of university life, he enjoys music, k-drama, and hiking.

Undergraduate Students

Cleah Winston

Cleah Winston is an undergraduate at the the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. She is currently involved in research at the Robot Learning Lab. In the past, her research has been in field of computational neuroscience, autonomous vehicles, and machine learning. She also co-authored a paper that was accepted at the International Conference of Software Engineering, 2022 and attended the in-person conference. When she is not studying or doing research, she loves to play basketball, compose music, and play the flute.

Yuquan "Nil" Deng

Yuquan "Nil" Deng is a junior majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is interested in legged robots. He is currently working on a mobile manipulation project with Yuxiang Yang.

Lahari Nidadavolu

Lahari is a senior studying computer science at Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at UW. She is currently working as an undergraduate researcher on the UW RACER project on the planning team. Her previous experience includes working on avionics software for multiple rockets and navigation software for robots. Outside of her passion for rocketry and roboticss, she enjoys reading, cooking, and traveling.

Alumni

Post-doc
Alexander "Sasha" Lambert
Post-doc 2023, now Senior Staff Research Scientist at Boston Dynamics
Guanya Shi
Post-doc 2023, now Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University
Alex Spitzer
Post-doc 2023, now Technical Lead at Overland AI
Amirreza Shaban
Post-doc 2022, now Senior Research Scientist at Cruise
Siyuan Dong
Post-doc 2022, now Research Scientist at Huawei
PhD
Mohak Bhardwaj
PhD 2024
Jacob Sacks
PhD 2023, now Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington
Anqi Li
PhD 2023, now Research Scientist at NVIDIA
Boling Yang
PhD 2023
Nolan Wagener
PhD 2023
Siddarth Srinivasan
PhD 2022, now Post-doctoral Fellow at the Brookings Institution
Alexander "Sasha" Lambert
PhD 2021, now Senior Staff Research Scientist at Boston Dynamics
Xinyan Yan
PhD 2020, now Software Engineer at Aurora Innovation
Amirreza Shaban
PhD 2020, now Senior Research Scientist at Cruise
Ching-An Cheng
PhD 2020, now Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research
Mustafa Mukadam
PhD 2019, now Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research
Jing Dong
PhD 2018, now Research Scientist at Facebook Reality Labs
MS
Rama Krishna
MS 2023, now Machine Learning Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development
Sandeep Reddy
MS 2023, now Robotics AI Intern at Bosch Center for AI
Brian Lee
MS 2022, now Research Engineer at KLNet
Jakub Filipek
MS 2022, now Software Engineer at Overland AI
Nathan Hatch
MS 2021, now Software Engineer at Overland AI
Hemanth Sarabu
MS 2019, now Research Engineer at Symbio Robotics
Aravind Battaje
MS 2019, now Robotics Ph.D. student at TU Berlin
Zhen Liu
MS 2018, now CS Ph.D. student at MILA
Ivan Dario Jimenez Rodriguez
MS 2018, now CS Ph.D. student at Caltech
Eric Huang
MS 2017, now Robotics Ph.D. student at CMU
Rahul Goel
MS 2016, now Software Engineer at Google
Xiang Liu
MS 2015, now CS Ph.D. student at UC Boulder
Sen Hu
MS 2015, now Software Engineer at Facebook
Gayatri Singh
MS 2015, now Software Engineer at Amazon
Paritosh Gote
MS 2015, now Software Engineer at Microsoft
Visiting Students
Benedikt Schesch
Visiting student from ETH Zurich in 2022
Milos Pragr
Visiting student from Czech Technical University in 2023