People

David M. Rosen (Principal Investigator)

David M. Rosen is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Mathematics and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences (by courtesy) at Northeastern University, where he leads the Robust Autonomy Laboratory (NEURAL).

He is broadly interested in the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of trustworthy autonomy. His research applies tools from nonlinear optimization, differential geometry and topology, abstract algebra, and probability and statistics to devise principled, computationally efficient, and provably robust algorithms for machine learning, perception, and control.

He holds the degrees of B.S. in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology (2008), M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin (2010), and Sc.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016).  Prior to joining Northeastern, he was a Research Scientist at Oculus Research (now Meta Reality Labs) from 2016 to 2018, and a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) from 2018 to 2021.

Matthew Giamou

Matthew Giamou is a postdoctoral researcher with Northeastern University’s Robust Autonomy Laboratory (NEURAL), where he is working on efficient global polynomial optimization for challenging robotic perception problems. He will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing and Software at McMaster University in the Fall of 2023.

His research interests center on the application of methods from convex optimization to multi-robot navigation, sensor calibration, deep rotation regression, inertial parameter estimation, and inverse kinematics.

He holds the degrees of B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto (2015), M.Sc. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2017), and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies (2022).

Pushyami Kaveti

Pushyami Kaveti is a postdoctoral researcher with Northeastern University’s Field Robotics Laboratory (FRL) and Robust Autonomy Laboratory (NEURAL), where she is working on multi-camera visual SLAM for high-speed state estimation.

She is interested in the design and development of robust perception methods to aid robot navigation and mapping in environments with dynamic objects, visual degradation and fast motion. Her research lies at the intersection of sensor fusion, computer vision and machine learning.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (2011), a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Florida (2014), and a Ph.D. from Northeastern University (2022). During the course of her education she also also completed multiple internships at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and the Toyota Research Institute.

Contact Pushyami at kaveti.p@northeastern.edu

Liam Pavlovic

Liam Pavlovic is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. He began his graduate studies in Fall 2022, and is co-advised by Professors David Rosen and Lawson Wong. He is primarily interested in developing robotic agents that can explore safely and learn reliably with minimal human guidance. His current research focus is improving the expressivity of uncertainty models used in robotic systems to enable introspective reasoning for robotic agents.

He holds the degree of B.S. in Computer Science from Northeastern University, with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and a minor in Mathematics. Prior to joining NEURAL, he interned at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in the fall of 2021.

Owen Howell

Owen Howell is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is interested in machine learning, with a particular focus on autonomy and computer vision. He is currently working on developing certifiable machine learning algorithms for problems in geometric reconstruction, computer vision, and molecular modeling. His research is supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Prior to joining NEURAL, he completed his undergraduate education in Physics, and worked in the fintech industry. In his spare time, he enjoys studying mathematics and competing in triathlons.

Contact Owen at howell.o@northeastern.edu

Jordan Gittleman

Jordan Gittleman joined Northeastern’s M.S. Robotics program in Fall 2020. His research interests include robust mapping, computer vision, and drone systems. He is currently working on Bayesian estimation methods for dense 3D shape estimation.

He holds the degree of B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (2019). Prior to joining NEURAL, he interned at GreenSight (a Boston startup) as a robotics engineer and licensed FAA Part 107 drone pilot, where he worked on visual recognition and machine-learning-based automated fault detection systems for quadrotors.

Xavier Hubbard

Xavier Hubbard joined Northeastern’s M.S. Robotics program in 2020, and is currently finishing his final semester. His research interests include distributed optimization and control, autonomous navigation, sensor fusion, low-power embedded systems, and battery management system design.

He holds the degree of S.B. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2015). Prior to joining Northeastern, he worked for 5 years in industry building a variety of consumer products ranging from electric vehicles to wireless chargers, as well as amassing significant experience in test fixture design.

Shankara Narayanan Vaidyanathan

Shankara Narayanan Vaidyanathan is a Master’s student in Northeastern’s M.S. Robotics program, with a concentration in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is interested in robust sensor fusion for safe autonomy. His current work focuses on visual-inertial navigation systems for high-speed autonomous navigation.

He holds the degree of B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (2021). Prior to joining Northeastern, he was a Research Assistant at the Robotics Research Centre at the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad, where he worked on visual servoing methods for long-range collision avoidance in micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs) and end-to-end learning frameworks for tabletop rearrangement planning.

Contact Shankara at vaidyanathan.sh@northeastern.edu