About Me

I’m a Computer Scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC. Since 2008 I’ve worked at NRL performing various tasks from acoustic signal processing to algorithm development for autonomous underwater vehicles. I obtained my Bachelors and Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the Catholic University of America, mainly working with Dr. Joseph Vignola. After obtaining my MS degree I switched departments and began working towards my doctorate in Computer Science under the direction of Dr. Erion Plaku which I obtained in the spring of 2016.

At NRL my main research interest is in combined task and motion planning for mobile robots with an emphasis on perceptive tasks (collecting data using active sensors, measuring environmental phenomena, etc.). In this work I focus on the underlying planning algorithms that enable mobile robots to perform their high-level objectives while considering the underlying system dynamics.


Updates

November 8: Field Tests, NRL Chesapeake Bay Detachment

To foster an inter-lab collaboration we hosted researchers from the Naval Surface Warface Center - Panama City Division at NRL for a several day visit. During the visit, we succesfully integrated NSWCPCDs Autonomous Vehicle Architecture (AVA) onboard one of our Iver2 AUVs and conducted preliminary in-water tests.

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September 25: IROS 2017, Vancouver

At IROS-17 I presented a paper on the work being done in collaboration with Virginia Tech. The paper focuses on how to quickly plan informative paths that direct an autonomous underwater vehicle to both search for mines and characterize the environment. The current pre-print can be found here!

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August 4: Field Tests, NRL Chesapeake Bay Detachment

Fridays during the summer mean experiments in the Chesapeake Bay with our light-weight AUVs. Today we were joined by the Physical Acoustics Branch 2017 summer interns as we worked towards improving the capabilities of our Iver2 vehicles.

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Professional Experience

  • 2016-PresentComputer Scientist

    Acoustics Division
    US Naval Research Laboratory
    Washington, DC

  • 2009-2016Mechanical Engineer

    Acoustics Division
    US Naval Research Laboratory
    Washington, DC

  • 2008-2009Research Assistant

    Acoustics Division
    US Naval Research Laboratory
    Washington, DC

  • 2007-2008ONR NREIP Internship

    Naval Air Engineering Station
    Lakehurst, NJ