Who: Ananya Rao Date: Friday, April 3rd Time: 10 AM ET Location: NSH 3305 Zoom Link Meeting ID: 949 1271 6317 Passcode: 809985 Title: Spectral-Based Coordination of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Teams for Information Gathering Abstract: Extreme environments, such as those encountered in planetary exploration or disaster response, present complex, time-sensitive tasks with significant uncertainty. In such settings, heterogeneous [...]

Date: 7th April 2026 Time: 10:00 a.m. (ET) Location: NSH 3305 Zoom: Link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Mrinal Verghese Title: Strategies for Robot Learning from Human Data   Abstract: Robot learning is fundamentally data-constrained. Internet-scale human data is a promising source of additional data about human environments, tasks, and common skills. This data comes in diverse representations, such as human videos [...]

Date: April 7th, 2026 Time: 3:30 PM (ET) Location: NSH 3305 Zoom Link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Neehar Peri Title: Towards Scalable Open-World 3D Perception Abstract:  State estimation is a fundamental component of embodied perception. For safe navigation, we argue that robots (and autonomous vehicles (AVs) specifically) must detect, track, and forecast all object categories, not just those [...]

Date: April 10th, 2026 Time: 09:00 AM (ET) Location: NSH 4305 Zoom Link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Abigail Breitfeld Abstract: Dynamic Multi-Objective Path Planning for Exploration Abstract: Robotic explorers play a crucial role in acquiring data from areas that are difficult or impossible for humans to reach. Whether for planetary exploration, search and rescue missions, agriculture, or [...]

Who: Tairan He Date: Monday, April 13, 2026 Time: 12:30 PM ET Room: GHC 8102 Zoom link Title: Scalable Sim-to-Real Learning for General-Purpose Humanoid Skills Abstract: Humanoid robots are compelling because they share the physical interface of the human world, including stairs, doors, tools, shelves, and workspaces designed around human embodiment. However, this same embodiment also makes [...]

Date: April 14th, 2026 Time: 12:15 PM (ET) Location: NSH 3305 Zoom Link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Rishi Veerapaneni Title: Efficient Multi-Agent Motion Planning using Local Policies   Abstract: My thesis is motivated by a future full of multi-agent systems: robots running warehouses, humanoids constructing buildings, aerial and ground robots delivering packages in urban environments, and autonomous rovers collaborating on [...]

Date: April 15th, 2026 Time: 9:00 am (EST) Room Location: NSH 3305 Zoom link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Jeong Hun (JJ) Lee Title: Just Keep Swimming: Harnessing Fluid-Robot Interaction for Bioinspired Aquatic Locomotion Abstract: Matching the swimming efficiency and agility of fish has remained an elusive goal in underwater robotics. Such locomotion capabilities require complex vortex interactions between the robot's body and [...]

Date: April 20, 2026 Time: 9:30-11 AM Location: NSH 3305 Zoom Link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Who: Gokul Swamy Title: Efficient Interactive Learning: Learning More From Less Abstract: Even as we near the limits of what human-generated data we can scrape from the Internet, today's decision-making agents -- from robots to large language models (LLMs) -- are [...]

Who: Cornelia Bauer Date: April 20, 2026 Time: 1:00 PM Location: NSH 4305 Zoom Link: here Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Title: Embracing Contact: Leveraging Physical Interactions for Enhanced Robotic Control   Abstract: As robotic systems become increasingly capable and commercially available, particularly in the form of humanoids and dexterous hands, enabling them to physically interact with their environment remains a fundamental challenge. Humans [...]