NEURAL

Faculty

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.

Personal site

Postdocs

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

Students

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. His research is supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

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

Frederick “Forrest” Miller

Forrest Miller (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics. He is broadly interested in developing new mathematical optimization techniques to solve challenging real-world problems.

He holds B.S. degrees in Mathematical Sciences and Data Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). While at WPI, he served as the President of WPI’s Math Club, and as an undergraduate teaching assistant.

Contact Forrest at miller.f@northeastern.edu.

Personal site

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

Aryaman Patel

Aryaman Patel is a Master’s student in Northeastern University’s M.S. Robotics program, specializing in Electrical and Computer Engineering (with a keen interest in robust perception for autonomy and factor graphs). Currently, Aryaman’s work centers around visual place recognition and loop closure in the context of multi-camera visual SLAM.

Aryaman holds a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Symbiosis Institute of Technology, awarded in 2021. Before joining Northeastern, he gained valuable experience as a Robotics Engineer at a startup company focused on developing vision-based autonomous robots for reliable material handling in the automobile industry, creating modular software stacks for multi-robot operations.

For inquiries or collaborations, please feel free to contact Aryaman at patel.aryam@northeastern.edu. He welcomes opportunities to engage with fellow researchers, professionals, and enthusiasts.