PhD Thesis Defense

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 [...]

Who: Nupur Kumari Date: April 21, 2026 Time: 2:00 PM Location: NSH 3305 (3rd floor) Zoom link Type: Ph.D. Thesis Defense Title: Customizing Text-to-Image Diffusion Models Abstract Recent advances in Generative AI highlight its growing potential to reshape content creation workflows, with the potential to support highly personalized use cases for everyday users and independent creators. However, realizing these [...]

TBD - details will be posted no later than April 15

TBD - this information will be updated prior to May 1