Professor Nisar Ahmed
Dynamics, Systems and Controls with minors in ECE and Applied Math. From 2012-2013, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Cornell Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) with Professor Mark Campbell. He obtained his B.S. in Engineering in 2006 from The Cooper Union in his hometown of New York City. He joined the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at CU Boulder as an Assistant Professor in 2014.Prof. Ahmed’s CV (periodically updated) and Google Scholar page.
Graduate Students
Luke Burks (Ph.D. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Luke hails from Arkansas, and earned his undergraduate degree in Physics from University of Arkansas. His research focuses on formal integrated 
planning and sensing strategies for human-robot information gathering missions.
Aastha Acharya (Ph.D. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Aastha is a Draper Fellow and earned her B.S. and M.Eng. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University, and has industry experience as a controls engineer with Lockheed Martin. 
Her research focuses on machine learning and competency awareness for autonomous aerospace systems.
Ofer Dagan (Ph.D. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Ofer earned his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Technion in Israel. 
After spending some time in industry, he is now performing research on enabling decentralized data fusion for autonomous vehicle systems with heterogeneous state estimates and ownship uncertainties.
Shohei Wakayama (Ph.D. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Shohei earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Kyushu University in Japan, and is pursuing his PhD in Aerospace Engineering through a fellowship from the Masason 
Foundation. His research focuses on developing novel strategies for collaborative human-autonomy decision-making under uncertainty in space exploration missions.
Jonathan Manni (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
(co-advised with Prof. Jay McMahon). Jonathan graduated from Calvin College in May of 2017 with a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a minor in German. As an undergraduate, Jonathan participated in numerous study programs in Germany, including a research internship developing methods to improve crop sensing and imaging for autonomous agricultural robotic platforms at the Osnabrück University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück, Germany. Jonathan’s research interests include spacecraft autonomy and computer vision. Outside of his academic interests, he enjoys hiking, learning, tinkering, photography, and travel.
Jeremy Muesing (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Jeremy is Colorado native and graduated from the CU Boulder in 2017 with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and minor in Astrophysics. 
As a Discovery Learning Apprentice (DLA) research student for 2016-2017, he performed research on acoustic target localization for cooperative human-robot search missions. His thesis research focuses on Bayesian modeling and data fusion techniques for human operator assisted target characterization in automated tracking systems.
Ian Loefgren (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Ian joined the lab in March 2016 and has also spent a summer as an intern with Draper. A graduate of the Smead AES program (B.S. 2018), his M.S. thesis research focuses on communication-limited cooperative localization for underwater vehicles using event-triggered decentralized data fusion. 
As an undergraduate, he contributed to the “Cops and Robots” research effort, and was part of the lab-sponsored “RAVEN” senior project which developed a cooperative localization testbed for autonomous air and ground vehicles.
Cody Charland (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
A graduate of the Smead AES program (B.S. 2018), Cody’s M.S. thesis research focuses on online planning for simultaneous search and mapping for autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles operating in unknown environments. As an undergraduate, he was part of the lab-sponsored “RAVEN” senior project which developed a cooperative localization testbed for autonomous air and ground vehicles.
Dawson Beatty (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
A graduate of the Smead AES and Applied Math programs (B.S. 2019), Dawson’s M.S. thesis research focuses on communication-limited data fusion for autonomous air-ground-space vehicle systems, with application to Martian exploration missions. 
As an undergraduate, he was part of the lab-sponsored “DRAGON” senior project which developed a projectile-based RF cooperative localization testbed for an autonomous ground rover.
Akash Rateesh Babu (M.S. student, Aerospace Engineering Sciences)
Akash’s M.S. thesis research focuses on combining methods for communication-limited decentralized state estimation with formal multi-objective optimization and verification techniques for autonomous space systems.
Undergraduate Students
Luke Barbier (B.S. Computer Science and ECEE, Class of 2019)
Luke is a CS and ECEE senior who joined the lab in 2017. He is part of the CU Boulder Discovery Learning Apprenticeship (DLA) program, and has contributed to the active collaborative semantic sensing research effort. He is now part of the “MinAu” project, where his DLA research will focus on new techniques for communication-limited underwater cooperative localization and data fusion. He is also the captain of the successful CU Boulder RoboSub autonomous underwater vehicle team. 
Jamison McGinley (B.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Class of 2019)
Jamison is an AES senior who joined the lab in 2017. He is part of the CU Boulder Discovery Learning Apprenticeship (DLA) program, and has contributed to the active collaborative semantic sensing research effort as well as the “TRAADRE” project, which studied user trust in autonomous planning systems for lunar rover operations. 
His DLA research will look at how machine generated assurances for decision making under uncertainty can be used to adjust user trust in autonomous aerospace systems. He is also a member of the CU Boulder Rugby Team.
Sousheel Vunnam (B.S. Computer Science, Class of 2019)
Sousheel is a senior in CS and Applied Math who joined the lab in 2017. He is part of the CU Boulder Discovery Learning Apprenticeship (DLA) program, and contributed to the active collaborative semantic sensing research effort. 
He is interested in combining perception techniques with machine learning-based natural language processing approaches to improve human-robot communication.
Holden Kjerland-Nicoletti (B.S. Computer Science, Class of 2021)
Holden is a junior majoring in Computer Science and Applied Math who joined the lab in 2018. He has contributed to the ongoing active semantic sensing project for autonomous robot-human collaborative data fusion. He is also a member of the CU Boulder Rugby Team. 
Lab Alumni
Stephen McGuire (Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering Sciences, 2019)
Dissertation title: “Autonomous Online Learning of Assistant Selection Policies for Fault Recovery” (funded by NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship)
Current position: Postdoctoral research associate, Computer Science Department, University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, CO)
Brett Israelsen (Ph.D., Computer Science, 2019)
Dissertation title: “Algorithmic Assurances and Self-Assessment of Competency Boundaries in Autonomous Systems”
Current position: Senior research engineer, United Technologies Research Center (East Hartford, CT)
David Iglesias (M.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences, 2017)
M.S. Thesis: “Cooperative Robot Localization Using Event-triggered Estimation ” 
Current position: Point One Navigation (San Francisco, CA)
Nicholas Sweet (M.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences, 2016)
M.S. Thesis: “Semantic Likelihood Models for Bayesian Inference in Human-Robot Interaction”
Current position: Engineer at Maidbot (Austin, TX).
Matthew Aitken (M.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences, 2016)
M.S. Thesi
s: “Assured Human-Autonomy Interaction through Machine Self-Confidence”
Current position: Engineer at Draper (Cambridge, MA).
Sierra Williams (B.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Class of 2017)
