People

  • Dr. Jonathan Kelly

    Professor

    Prof. Kelly is the Director of the STARS Laboratory; his research is focused on understanding how robots can successfully interact with the world, by building internal models of state and deriving sufficient statistics.

Current Students 
  • Trevor Ablett

    Ph.D. Student

    Trevor is working on learning-based modelling techniques for mobile manipulator task execution in collaborative environments.

  • Oliver Limoyo

    Ph.D. Student

    Oliver is working on enabling mobile manipulators to learn how to interact with unstructured and dynamic environments.

  • Emmett Wise

    Ph.D. Student

    Emmett is working on sensing and localization methods for mobile vehicles using radar.

  • Olivier Lamarre

    Ph.D. Student

    Olivier is working on adaptive long-range navigation planning with planetary rovers in collaboration with NASA JPL.

  • Adam Hall

    Ph.D. Student

    Adam is working on interactive perception algorithms for mobile manipulators in collaboration with the Dynamic Systems Laboratory at UTIAS.

  • Philippe Nadeau

    Ph.D. Student

    Philippe is studying how robot-environment interactions can be leveraged to improve manipulation models.

  • Jinbang Huang

    Ph.D. Student

    Jinbang is working on hybrid neurosymbolic task and motion planning algorithms in collaboration with the RVL Lab, U of T CS.

  • Katie Allison

    M.A.Sc. Student

    Katie is designing a new ‘smart surface’ gripper design in collaboration with Prof. Ben Hatton in MSE.

  • Selina Leveugle

    M.A.Sc. Student

    Selina is exploring visual anomaly detection for on-orbit operations of robotic manipulators.

  • Mia Thomas

    M.A.Sc. Student

    Mia is studying methods for visual-inertial and thermal-inertial navigation for day/night autonomous flight.

  • Sampanna Bhattarai

    M.A.Sc. Student

    Sampanna is working on visual tracking from aerostat vehicles in collaboration with Solar Ship Inc.

  • Edwin Ng

    M.A.Sc. Student

    Edwin is exploring deep learning methods for semantic mapping in indoor environments.

Alumni 
  • Dr. Filip Marić

    Ph.D. Student (2023)

    Filip explored geometric methods for manipulator motion planning in collaboration with LAMoR (University of Zagreb). Now a Research Scientist at Samsung AI, Montreal.

  • Dr. Matthew Giamou

    Ph.D. Student (2022)

    Matthew worked on certifiably optimal estimation for safe robotic perception and planning. Now a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. David Rosen at NEURAL, Northeastern.

  • Dr. Brandon Wagstaff

    Ph.D. Student (2022)

    Brandon worked on improving visual and inertial navigation algorithms by applying deep learning. Now a Robotics Perception Engineer at Applanix in Toronto.

  • Andrej Janda

    Master's Student (2022)

    Andrej designed a new self-supervised semantic mapping framework for visual and lidar data. Now a Software Engineer at Oxbotica, Toronto.

  • Erin Richardson

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2022)

    Erin worked on lunar rover navigation planning software in cooperation with MDA. Now a Ph.D. student at CU Boulder in bioastronautics, working with Prof. Allison Anderson.

  • Dr. Ahmad Bilal Asghar

    Postdoctoral Fellow (2021)

    Ahmad worked on navigation planning over stochastic graphs. He obtained his Ph.D. from Waterloo. Now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland.

  • Chris Grebe

    Master's Student (2021)

    Chris compared observability-aware trajectory optimization methods. Now a Sensor Fusion Engineer at Trimble Autonomous Solutions in Westminster, Colorado.

  • Abhinav Grover

    Master's Student (2021)

    Abhinav worked on learning-based methods for tactile slip detection. Now an ML Engineer at Kindred AI in San Francisco.

  • Petra Alexson

    Undergraduate Research Student (2021)

    Petra helped to build our GNN-based inverse kinematics solver. Now a B.A.Sc. student in Engineering Science at U of T.

  • Kelly Zhu

    Undergraduate Research Student (2021)

    Kelly was involved in the design and testing of a new uncertainty-aware stochastic path planning framework. Now a B.A.Sc. student in Engineering Science at U of T.

  • Justin Tomasi

    Master's Student (2020)

    Justin investigated methods for increasing the robustness of visual motion estimation for high-speed robot platforms. Now a Software Engineer at Ribbit, Toronto.

  • Jason Wang

    Undergraduate Research Student (2020)

    Jason worked on visual docking algorithms for our autonomous tail-sitter aerial vehicle (the Phoenix Drone).

  • Soroush Khoubyarian

    Undergraduate Research Student (2020)

    Soroush helped to devise several algorithms for certifiably optimal estimation. Now B.A.Sc. student in Engineering Science at U of T.

  • Hudson Schier

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2020)

    Hudson worked on rover autonomy software as part of the U of T Robotics for Space Exploration competition team.

  • Yuchen Wu

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2020)

    Yuchen examined reinforcement learning in cooperation with Prof. Florian Shkurti at UTM. Now an M.A.Sc. student in Prof. Tim Barfoot’s group at UTIAS.

  • Dr. Valentin Peretroukhin

    Ph.D. Student (2020)

    Valentin studied ways to improve visual localization through the use of deep learning. Now a Computational Research Scientist at Structura Biotechnology, Toronto.

  • Dr. Lee Clement

    Ph.D. Student (2020)

    Lee investigated how learning can be used to enable long-term visual navigation. Now a Software Engineer at Oxbotica, Toronto.

  • Shui Song Luar

    Undergraduate Exchange Student (2019)

    Shui Song visited us from NTU, Singapore, to work on semantic mapping for manipulation tasks. Now a Master’s student at NUS, Singapore.

  • Juraj Peršić

    Visiting Doctoral Student (2019)

    Juraj worked on mm-wave radar as part of ongoing research for his Ph.D. in the LAMoR group at the University of Zagreb. Now a postdoc in LAMoR.

  • Brian Aly

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2019)

    Brian developed extensions to our deep appearance modelling framework. Now a Software Engineer III at Google in Mountain View.

  • Richard Seo

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2019)

    Richard worked on an advanced SLAM package for the RSX Rover Challenge Team at U of T. Now a Software engineer at Microsoft.

  • Ray Qureshi

    Undergraduate Research Student (2019)

    Ray developed tools to support visual navigation of our tail sitter aerial platform. Now a Software Engineer at Stripe in San Francisco.

  • Ziye (Gaven) Ma

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2019)

    Ziye applied convex optimization to robot mapping problems. Currently a Ph.D. student in EECS at Prof. Somayeh Sojoudi’s lab, UC Berkeley.

  • Tobias Ulrich

    Master's Exchange Student (2018)

    Tobias completed his Master’s at the STARS Lab on exchange from ETH Zürich, working on human-robot cooperative manipulation. Now a Project Manager at ASE in Zürich.

  • Jordan Marr

    Master's Student (2018)

    Jordan worked on spatiotemporal calibration algorithms for lidar-camera and lidar-IMU sensor pairs. Now a Senior Software Engineer at NVIDIA, Santa Clara.

  • David (Yilun) Wu

    Undergraduate Research Student (2018)

    David designed and built our Phoenix tail-sitter drone from scratch! Now a Ph.D. student in neuromorphic AI at TU Delft with Prof. Guido de Croon.

  • Thomas Kingsford

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2018)

    Thomas worked on various methods for airborne threat tracking. Now a Software Engineer in the New Zealand Defence Force.

  • Jenni Lam

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2018)

    Jenni worked on modifying our deep network for sun detection, Sun-BCNN. Now a Software Engineer at Nuro in San Francisco.

  • Luke Volpatti

    Undergraduate Research Student (2017)

    Luke worked on improving our suite of sensor calibration tools. Now a Master’s student in Electrical Engineering and IT at ETH Zürich.

  • Xinyi Li

    Mitacs Globalink Student (2017)

    Xinyi built navigation and mapping software for our self-driving wheelchair. Last at Zhejiang University.

  • Lingzhu Xiang

    Ph.D. Student (2017)

    Lingzhu’s research focused on visual navigation in dynamic environments. Last at Google in Toronto.

  • Jennifer Sun

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2017)

    Jennifer developed software for our mobile manipulator. Currently a Ph.D. student in Prof. Pietro Perona’s group at Caltech, Pasadena.

  • Ningwen Xu

    Master's Exchange Student (2017)

    Last at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

  • Willie Hsieh

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2017)

    Now an Advanced System Engineer, SATCOM, at Honeywell Aerospace in Ottawa (Kanata).

  • Christine (Ji Eun) Lee

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2017)

    Now Satellite Operations Lead at Kepler Communications Inc., in Toronto.

  • Johnny (Ze Yang) Wang

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2017)

    Now a Software Development Engineer II at Amazon Robotics, Toronto.

  • Jason Yang

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2017)

    Jason worked on navigation software for our autonomous wheelchair platform. Last at Synapticon in Stuttgart, Germany.

  • Jacob Lambert

    Master's Student (2017)

    Jacob developed automatic lidar-camera self-calibration software. Now a Self-Driving Car Engineer at Perception Engine, Nagoya, Japan.

  • Yuan Liang

    Master's Exchange Student (2016)

    Last at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

  • Farid Akhoundov

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Now a Senior Software Engineer at Faire (leading online wholesale marketplace tech) in Toronto.

  • Wei-Kang Tseng

    Undergraduate Research Student (2016)

    Wei-Kang built a trajectory design tool for ROS. Now a Controls and Software Developer at General Motors in Toronto.

  • Julian Coelho

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Now a Senior Software Engineer, Last Mile Technology at Amazon in Seattle, Washington.

  • Rahul Goel

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Now at PheedLoop, a startup he co-founded during his undergraduate studies.

  • Alice Gong

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Alice worked on our autonomous wheelchair project. Now a Software Engineer at Waymo, Mountain View.

  • Charlie Guan

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Charlie worked on our autonomous wheelchair project. Now a Research Scientist at Toyota Research Institute, Los Altos.

  • Tim Tang

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2016)

    Now a Ph.D. student with Prof. Paul Newman at the Oxford Robotics Institute, UK.

  • Fei Yu

    Master's Exchange Student (2015)

    Last at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

  • Faizan Rehmatullah

    Undergraduate Thesis Student (2015)

    Now a Senior Engineer, Mission Systems, at MDA in Toronto (Brampton).