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Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

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Current Members

Postdoctoral Research Associates

Masih Haseli (mhaseli at ucsd.edu), 2022-
Data-driven modeling of dynamic systems, Koopman-operator methods

Fei Cheng (fec003 at ucsd.edu), 2023- [joint with Prof. S. Martínez]
Network resilience, time-varying actuation

Graduate Students

Pol Mestres (pomestre at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2020-
Safety-critical control, optimization-based controllers, epidemic spreading

Zhenyi Yuan (z7yuan at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2020-
Data-driven control, reinforcement learning with provable guarantees, power systems

Mohammed Alyaseen (malyasee at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2021-
Safety-critical control, control barrier functions under saturation

Scott Addams (saddams at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2021-
Markov processes, information-constrained learning

Benjamin Hwang (bdhwang at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2022- [joint with Prof. S. Martínez]
Aggregation of distributed energy resources, set-based dynamic programming

Neilabh Banzal (nbanzal at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2022- [joint with Prof. S. Martínez]
Learning of tactical multi-robot formations, exploitation of cover in contested environments

Dhruv Shah (dhshah at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2023-
Data-driven modeling, analysis, and design

Azra Begzadic (abegzadic at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2023- [joint with Prof. S. Herbert]
Event-triggered learning, safety-critical control of uncertain systems

Steven Nguyen (stn030 at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2023- [joint with Prof. B. Kramer]
Data-based control of nonlinear systems, model reduction

Aleix Salvador (asalvadorpomarol at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2024-

William Retnaraj (wretnaraj at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2024-

Past Members

Postdoctoral Research Associates

Bahman Gharesifard, 2009-2012, now Professor at Queen's University, Canada
Graph balancing, adversarial reasoning, hypergames, and distributed optimization

Solmaz Kia, 2012-2014 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now Professor at University of California, Irvine
Dynamic average consensus, distributed optimization, event-triggered control

Mike Ouimet, 2014-2015 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now Staff Software Engineer at Singular Genomics
Provision of network integrity by cordination of stratospheric vehicles, multi-agent robotics laboratory

Yingbo Zhao, 2015-2016, now Senior Algorithms Engineer at ASML
Reachability metrics for bilinear networks, identification of complex networks

Pavan Tallapragada, 2014-2017, now Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Science
Opportunistic event-triggered control, information theory, differential privacy, intelligent transportation

Kooktae Lee, 2016-2017, now Associate Professor at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Recending-horizon multi-objective optimization

Chin-Yao Chang, 2016-2018 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now at National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Optimal power flow, distributed and mixed-integer optimization, control and actuator selection

Dariush Fooladivanda, 2018-2019 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now Postdoc at UC Berkeley
Modeling and control of power and transportation networks

Dimitris Boskos, 2018-2020 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology
Data-driven distributionally robust optimization, ambiguity sets and uncertainty quantification

Miguel Vaquero, 2017-2020, now Assistant Professor at IE University, Madrid, Spain
Data-driven online optimization, distributed primal-dual methods, resource-aware control and accelerated optimization

Xuan Wang, 2020-2021, now Assistant Professor at George Mason University
Identification and data-driven control of brain networks with rate dynamics

Prasad Vilas Chanekar, 2018-2021, now Assistant Professor at Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology
Network edge-centrality, controllability metrics, network modification

Shenyu Liu, 2020-2022 [joint with Prof. S. Martínez], now Assistant Professor at Beijing Institute of Technology
Network resilience, stability metrics

Tommaso Menara (tmenara@eng.ucsd.edu), 2022-2023
Reservoir systems, network neuroscience

Jaap Eising (jeising at eng.ucsd.edu), 2021-2023
Data informativity, network sparse design, data-driven control

Graduate Students

Anurag Ganguli, PhD, 2002-2007, co-advised with Prof. Francesco Bullo, now Senior Engineer at PlusAI
PhD Thesis: "Motion Coordination for Mobile Robotic Networks with Visibility Sensors"
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Mike Schuresko, PhD, 2005-2009, now at Standard Cognition
PhD Thesis: "Controlling Global Network Connectivity of Robot Swarms With Local Interactions"
Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of California, Santa Cruz

Rishi Graham, PhD, 2006-2010, now Postdoc at MBARI
PhD thesis: "Information-Driven Cooperative Sampling Strategies for Spatial Estimation by Robotic Sensor Networks"
Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of California, Santa Cruz

Cameron Nowzari, PhD, 2009-2013, now Associate Professor at George Mason University
PhD thesis: "Distributed Triggered Control of Networked Cyber-Physical Systems"
2013 MAE Outstanding Graduate Student Award

Mike Ouimet, PhD, 2009-2014, now Staff Software Engineer at Singular Genomics
PhD thesis: "Distributed Cooperation for Robust Estimation"

Dean Richert, PhD, 2010-2014, now Assistant Professor of Teaching, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada
PhD thesis: "Robust Distributed Control of Networked Systems with Linear Programming Objectives"
2014 MAE Outstanding Graduate Student Award
Inaugural recipient of "Robert E. Skelton Systems and Control Dissertation Award" (academic year 2013-2014)

Simon Niederlaender, MS, 2014-2015, now PhD student at University of Stuttgart, Germany
MS thesis: "Distributed Continuous-Time Coordination for Nonsmooth Convex and Robust Optimization"
Engineering Cybernetics, University of Stuttgart, Germany and
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego

David Mateos, PhD, 2011-2015, now Postdoc at Fraunhofer FHR
PhD thesis: "Distributed Algorithms for Convex Optimization: Noisy Channels, Online Computation, Nuclear Norm Regularization, and Separable Constraints"

Ashish Cherukuri, PhD, 2012-2017, now Assistant Professor at University of Groningen, The Netherlands
PhD thesis: "Coordination and Competition in Optimal Dispatch: Distributed Algorithms, Saddle-Point Dynamics, and Iterative Bidding"
2016 MAE Outstanding Graduate Student Award
2016 MAE Distinguished Fellowship Award
Recipient of "Robert E. Skelton Systems and Control Dissertation Award" (academic year 2016-2017)

Yifu Zhang, PhD, 2014-2019, now Senior Software Engineer at Bloomberg
PhD thesis: "Transient Frequency Analysis and Distributed Synthesis for Power Networks"
2019 MAE Outstanding Graduate Student Award

Erfan Nozari, PhD, 2014-2019, now Assistant Professor at UC Riverside
PhD thesis: "Networked Dynamical Systems: Privacy, Control, and Cognition"
2018 MAE Distinguished Fellowship Award
Recipient of "Robert E. Skelton Systems and Control Dissertation Award" (academic year 2018-2019)

Aaron Ma, MS, 2014-2016, PhD, 2016-2020, now Senior Engineer at Shield AI
MS thesis: " Visibility-Based Distributed Deployment of Robotic Teams in Polyhedral Terrains"
PhD thesis: "Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Cooperative Multi-Agent Planning: Exploiting Hierarchies, Bias, and Temporal Sampling"

Priyank Srivastava, PhD, 2016-2021, now Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
PhD thesis: "Constrained Network Optimization: Algorithms, and Applications in Frequency Regulation"

Pio Ong, PhD, 2016-2021, now postdoc at Caltech
PhD thesis: "Uniting and Balancing Control Objectives: Safety, Stability, Smoothness, and Resource Conservation"

Masih Haseli, PhD, 2017-2022, now postdoc at UC San Diego
PhD thesis: "Data-Driven System Analysis Using the Koopman Operator: Eigenfunctions, Invariant Subspaces, and Accuracy Bounds"

Ahmed Allibhoy (aallibho at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2018-2023, now postdoc at UC Riverside
PhD thesis: "Design and Analysis of Interconnected Systems: Optimization Algorithms and Linear-Threshold Brain Networks"

Michael McCreesh (mmccrees at ucsd.edu), PhD, 2019-2024
PhD thesis: "Linear-Threshold Network Dynamics: Properties and Applications to Dynamical Brain Behaviors"

Visiting Graduate Students

Rosario Aragüés, visiting PhD student, Spring 08, Spring 09
Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering
Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

Edgardo Chunga, visiting PhD student, Spring 09
Department of Sciences, Mathematics Section
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Perú

Rokus Ottervanger, visiting MS student, Spring 14
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Technology Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Tjerk Stegink, visiting PhD student, Spring 17
Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control,
University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Ernesto Aranda Escolástico, visiting PhD student, Spring 17
Departmento de Informática y Automática
Universidad Nacional de Eduacion a Distancia, Spain

Pedro Miguel Otao Pereira, visiting PhD student, Spring 18
Department of Automatic Control
KTH, Sweden

Undergraduate Students

Brazil Scientific Mobility Program
Bruno Maciel, Instituto Federal Fluminense, Summer 2015

California Alliance for Minority Participation Summer Research Program
Gerardo González, UC San Diego, Summer 2015

ENLACE Summer Research Program
Tomas Torres, UC Davis, Summer 2017
Ramon Durán, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Summer 2017
Ricardo Ruvalcaba, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Summer 2018

Independent Study for Undergraduates
Katie Laventall, UC Santa Cruz, Fall 2006-Spring 2007, senior thesis
Katherine Liu, UC San Diego, Winter, Spring 2014, Fall 2014-Spring 2015
Daniel Heideman, UC San Diego, Winter 2014-Winter 2015
Matthew Qen, UC San Diego, Fall 2014-Spring 2015
Mike Liu, UC San Diego, Spring 2015-Spring 2016
Gerardo González, UC San Diego, Fall 2015-Spring 2016
Jose L. Ramirez, UC San Diego, Summer 2015-Winter 2016
Julio Martinez, UC San Diego Summer 2015-Spring 2016
Zhiye Zhang, UC San Diego, Fall 2015
Shiyuan Huang, UC San Diego, Winter 2015-Summer 2016
Aamir Rasheed, UC San Diego, Spring 2016
Andrew Chen, UC San Diego, Summer 2016-Fall 2017
Alexander Khoury, UC San Diego, Fall 2016-Spring 2017, Fall 2017
Mingze An, UC San Diego, Winter 2016-Spring 2017, Fall 2017
Alec Chac, UC San Diego, Summer 2017-Fall 2017
Stuart Sardo, UC San Diego, Fall 2017-Spring 2018
Zhe Wei, UC San Diego, Fall 2017
Lingzhi Zheng, UC San Diego, Winter 2018
Wells Huang, UC San Diego, Summer 2018-Fall 2018

NEW Scholars
Diego Miranda-Gutierrez, Summer 2018

Regents Scholar Initiative Program
Adam Durbin, UC San Diego, Fall 2012
Agustin Manríquez, UC San Diego, Fall 2017
Ignatius Widjaja, UC San Diego, Fall 2018

Summer Training Academy for Research in the Sciences Program
Ethan Allen, Morgan State University, Summer 2012
Bryan Yang, UC San Diego, Summer 2016
Ashim Neupane, Howard University, Summer 2016 and Summer 2017
Donipolo Guimere, Howard University, Summer 2018
Tareq Labeeb, Cypress College, Summer 2018

UCSD-Zhejiang University Summer Research Program
Peizhen Gu, Zhejiang University, Summer 2014

UCSD Undergraduate Research Scholarship Program
Gerardo González, UC San Diego, Summer 2016

Universidad Politecnica de Cataluña, Programa de Movilidad Internacional
Robert Planas, CFIS-UPC, Winter 2019-Spring 2019
Pol Mestres, CFIS-UPC, Fall 2019-Winter 2020
Javier Gallardo Saenz, CFIS-UPC, Fall 2023-Spring 2024
Arnau Marzabal, CFIS-UPC, Fall 2024-Spring 2025

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, California, 92093-0411

Ph: 1-858-822-7930
Fax: 1-858-822-3107

cortes at ucsd.edu
Skype id: jorgilliyo