Principal Investigator

  

Dr. Brendan Englot received S.B., S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2007, 2009 and 2012, respectively. At MIT, he studied motion planning for surveillance and inspection applications, deploying his algorithms on an underwater robot to inspect Navy and Coast Guard ships. During 2012-2014, Brendan was with United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a Research Scientist and Principal Investigator in the Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and a technical contributor to the Sikorsky Autonomous Research Aircraft. He joined Stevens as an Assistant Professor in 2014, and he is currently the Anson Wood Burchard Endowed Professor, and Director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). Brendan is the recipient of a 2017 NSF CAREER award and a 2020 ONR Young Investigator award. During 2018-2024, he held the Geoffrey S. Inman Endowed Junior Professorship. (Link to Stevens faculty webpage)


Ph.D. Students









    

Yin Chen received dual Bachelor's Degrees in Materials Science and Engineering and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2005, and an Ordnance Engineering Certificate also from Stevens in 2008. She is a senior Research Aerospace Engineer for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Armament Center, co-located with the Armament Graduate School where she is a faculty member teaching Systems Theory and Exterior Ballistics. Her research interests are in reconfigurable robotic motion mechanisms.


    

Ivana Collado-Gonzalez received a Bachelor's Degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Tecnologico de Monterrey in 2021, and a Master's Degree in Robotics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2023. Prior to joining Stevens, she worked at Xlab Protexa R&D, on the development of an autonomous mobile robot. Her research interests include robust motion planning and autonomous exploration.






    

Kyle Hart received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2012 from Lehigh University. He received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2013, also from Lehigh University. Since then, he has been leading the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Lab at Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Lakehurst, NJ. There, he has been developing robotic technology to aid sailors onboard aircraft carriers. His research interests include robot localization and navigation under extremely challenging environments experienced at sea.








  

Yaxuan Li received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Qiushi Honors College in Tianjin University in 2020, and a Master's degree in Robotics from New York University in 2023. His research interests include visual SLAM, structure from motion and vision-based navigation of mobile robots.









  

Xi Lin received a Bachelor’s degree in Aircraft Propulsion Engineering from Xiamen University in 2018, and dual Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics from University of Michigan in 2021. His research interests are Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) and autonomous navigation problems of mobile robotics.








  

Noé Pigret trained as a general engineer in France. He graduated from the Ecole Centrale de Lille after specializing in robotics at Centrale Nantes. He then took advantage of a joint program to enroll at Stevens Institute of Technology as a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. He is working on active SLAM solutions for multi-robot systems and aims to develop high-fidelity simulation tools.










  

Paul Szenher received a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Engineering and a Master of Science Degree in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2020 and 2023, respectively. As an undergraduate, he contributed to the RFAL lab as a Pinnacle Scholars Summer Research Assistant. His research interests include LIDAR-based traversability map generation and interpretation for high-speed navigation in unmapped environments.





Alumni


 

 Nicholas Haliscak - Master of Science in Maritime Systems (with Thesis) - January 2016
 Dr. Nathaniel Goldfarb - Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering (with Thesis) - May 2016
 Ronnie Ankner - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2016
 Matthew Foerst - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2016
 Lice Zhang - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2016
 Dr. Xiangyu Xu - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2017
 Kyle Alvarado - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017
 James Fredericks - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017
 Mathew Green - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017
 Anthony Orrico - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017
 Max Panoff - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017
 Dr. Dengwei Gao - Visiting PhD Student, 2015-2017
 Dr. Kevin Doherty - Bachelor of Engineering in EE (with Thesis) - May 2017 - Now at Boston Dynamics
 Sarah Bertussi - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2017
 Xiaoyu Zhu - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2018
 Dr. Shi Bai - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - May 2018 - Founder of iServe Robotics
 Gregoire Caubel - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018
 Anthony Donatelli - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018
 Victoria Kapp - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2017, 2018
 Naomi Kroyer - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018
 Christopher Slappich - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018
 Joshua Zeitlinger - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018
 Sumukh Patil - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2018
 Nathan Smith - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2018
 Hui Zhang - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2018
 Michal Lyskawinski - Master of Science in Computer Science - May 2019
 Dr. Justin Sitler - Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering (with Thesis) - May 2019
 Dong Cui - Visiting PhD Student, 2017-2019
 Jonathan Gomis - Visiting Master's Student, ENSTA Bretagne, Summer 2019
 Dante D'Amico - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Alec Espina - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Alice Huston - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Matthew Kirby - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Daniel Lentini - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Federico Macchiavelli - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Asif Uddin - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2018, 2019
 Kevin Ward - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2019
 Michael DiGregorio - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2019
 Dr. Tixiao Shan - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - August 2019 - Now a Computer Scientist at SRI International
 Caralyn Cyr - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2019
 Jiajing Zhou - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2019
 Dr. Jinkun Wang - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - Jan. 2020 - Now a Software Engineer at Anyware Robotics
 Haotian Gu - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2020
 Ryan O'Shea - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2020
 Helen Walter-Cardinal - Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering (with Thesis) - May 2020
 Trent Berrien - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Jack Bonoli - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Anton Danylenko - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Kevin Raleigh - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Tyler Wright - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Daniel Zatko - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020
 Ming Liu - Visiting PhD Student, 2020
 Dr. John D. Martin - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - May 2021 - Now a Fellow at the Openmind Research Institute
 Ron Dumalagan - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2021
 Dairon Estevez - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2021
 Kristina Sunada - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2020, 2021
 Mehrab Syed - Maritime Security Center Summer Research Institute (SRI) Program Participant, 2021
 Matthew Zecca - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2020, 2021
 Dr. Fanfei Chen - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - Aug. 2021 - Now a Senior Software Engineer in Perception at Seegrid
 Connor O'Leary - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2021
 Shalemuraju Katari - Master of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering - Jan. 2022
 Takumasa Dohi - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2022
 Thomas Gana - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2022
 Christine Huang - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2022
 Julia Meyerson - Visiting High School Summer Research Assistant, 2020, 2021, 2022
 Chloe Potherat - Visiting Master's Student, ENSTA Bretagne, Summer 2022
 Alec Rybarski - Stevens ME SURP Summer Research Assistant, 2022
 Kristen Williams - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2022
 Franklin Wong - Stevens ME SURP Summer Research Assistant, 2022
 Benjamin Mirisola - ME401 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Undergraduate Research Project, 2022
 Thomas Colarusso - Summer Research Assistant, 2020-2022, ME800 Master's Project, 2023
 Cameron Murphy - Summer Research Assistant, 2022, ME401 Undergraduate Research Project, 2023
 Elmedina Veliu - Undergraduate Research Assistant, 2023
 Alexandre Batard - Visiting Master's Student, ENSTA Bretagne, Summer 2023
 Shiv Bhatt - Stevens ME SRP Summer Research Assistant, 2023
 Noah Spina - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2023
 Sean Tetrick - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2023
 Dr. John McConnell - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - May 2023 - Now an Assistant Professor at US Naval Academy
 Luisa Bonfim - Spring/Summer Research Assistant, 2023
 Dr. Erik Pearson - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - January 2024 - Now a Research Engineer at Fauna Robotics
 Cameron Ruddy - Senior Research Engineer, 2023-2024
 Lucas Babbio - Visiting High School Summer Research Assistant, 2024
 J. Lovelace - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2023, 2024
 Daniel Roche - Stevens Pinnacle Scholar Summer Research Assistant, 2023, 2024
 Dr. Diego Tiozzo Fasiolo - Visiting PhD Student, 2024
 Madeline Ogaldez - ME800 (Special Problems in Mech. Eng.) Master's Project, 2024
 Dr. Yewei Huang - Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - May 2025 - Now a Postdoctoral Associate at Dartmouth College
 Michael Cougle - Summer Research Assistant, 2025
 Michael Lugo - Summer Research Assistant, 2025
 Vincent Renda - Summer Research Assistant, 2024, 2025