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News

Oct. 2024. Michael M. Zavlanos joins Duke AI Health as Director of Healthcare Systems Optimization.

Sep. 2024. NeurIPS paper accepted on a new Distributionally Robust Optimization (DRO) framework that employs a new distance metric inspired by unbalanced optimal transport for enhanced outlier and missing data resilience.

 

Jun 2024. New preprint on learning transferrable robot policies under large changes in visual observations.

Feb 2024. New preprint on learning from time-series data on graphs by integrating path signatures and GNNs.

Sep 2023. New preprint on distributionally robust policy evaluation and learning.

 

Sep 2023. New preprint on learning transferrable robot policies using policy stitching.

 

Jul 2023. Kavin Sivakumar defends his PhD thesis entitled "Adaptive Planning in Changing Policies and Environments".

Jul 2022. Xenia Konti defends her Diploma thesis entitled "Causal Transfer Learning for Personalized Recommendation Systems".

Mar 2022. Michael M. Zavlanos is promoted to Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University.

Apr 2022. New preprint on risk-averse learning in online convex games.

Nov 2021. Jim Turner defends his MS thesis entitled "Receding Horizon Tracking of an Unknown Number of Mobile Targets using a Bearings-Only Sensor".

Aug 2021. Michael M. Zavlanos joins Amazon Robotics as an Amazon Scholar on sabbatical leave from Duke University.

Jul 2021. Yan Zhang defends his PhD thesis entitled "A New Zeroth-Order Oracle for Distributed and Non-Stationary Learning".

Jun 2021. New preprint on learning optimal policies from demonstrator data with hidden contextual information.

Jun 2021. New preprint on learning neural network controllers with closed-loop safety guarantees.

Mar 2021. Luke Calkins defends his PhD thesis entitled "Passive Acoustic Localization and Tracking with Mobile Robots".

Dec 2020. Xusheng Luo defends his PhD thesis entitled "Scalable Control Synthesis for Multi-Robot Systems under Temporal Logic Specifications".

 

Nov 2020. Jayson Zhou defends his MS thesis entitled "Online Semi-supervised Bayesian Optimization for Socially-Aware Trajectory Planning".

Nov 2020. Shiqi Sun defends his MS thesis entitled "Formal Verification of Stochastic ReLU Neural Network Control System".

Nov 2020. Chenyu Liu defends his MS thesis entitled "Transfer Learning in Continuous Reinforcement Learning Under Unobservable Contextual Information".

Oct 2020. New preprint on using residual feedback to efficiently estimate local policy gradients in distributed reinforcement learning.

Oct 2020. New preprint on a new one-point residual-feedback gradient estimator for zeroth-order online learning that achieves similar learning rate as two-point estimators.

Jul 2020. Our recent research on controlling large teams of robots subject to complex temporal logic tasks is featured in the Pratt School of Engineering news.

Apr 2020. Kavinayan Sivakumar wins an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP).

 

Nov 2019. Michael M. Zavlanos is co-organizing with George J. Pappas a Workshop on Learning for Control at the 2019 NSF CPS PI Meeting in Washington, DC.

 

Oct 2019. New NSF CPS grant on distributed learning for control of cyber-physical systems.

 

Oct 2019. New DoE grant on active sensing methods for condition assessment of power plants.

 

Jun 2019. Our new AFOSR Center of Excellence on assured autonomy in contested environments is featured in Pratt School of Engineering news.

May 2019. Reza Khodayi-mehr wins the 2018-2019 MEMS Outstanding Dissertation Research Award.

 

Apr 2019. Our recent research on model-based identification of particle sources in turbulent flows using small mobile robots is featured in Pratt School of Engineering news.

Apr 2019. New AFOSR Center of Excellence on assured autonomy in contested environments.

 

Mar 2019. Reza Khodayi-mehr defends his PhD thesis entitled "Model-Based Learning and Control of Advection-Diffusion Transport using Mobile Robots".

 

Jan 2019. Michael M. Zavlanos is elevated to Senior Member IEEE.

 

Dec 2018. Our recent research on controlling intermittently connected robot networks is featured in Pratt School of Engineering news.

Oct 2018. New NSF CPS grant on human-on-the-loop control for smart ultrasound imaging.

 

Jul 2018. Michael M. Zavlanos is awarded a Bass Professorship for excellence in research and teaching, awarded by Duke University.

 

Jul 2018. Michael M. Zavlanos is promoted to Associate Professor (with tenure) of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University.

 

May 2018. New ONR grant on controlling intermittently connected robot networks in underwater environments.

 

May 2018. Yiannis Kantaros wins the 2017-2018 MEMS Outstanding Dissertation Research Award.

 

Apr 2018. Qitong Gao defends his MS thesis entitled "Deep Reinforcement Learning with Temporal Logic Specifications".

Feb 2018. Yiannis Kantaros defends his PhD thesis entitled "Distributed Intermittent Connectivity Control of Mobile Robot Networks".

May 2017. The paper "Distributed Data Gathering with Buffer Constraints and Intermittent Communication" is a finalist for the Best Multi-Robot Systems Paper Award at ICRA 2017.

Apr 2017. Michael M. Zavlanos is co-organizing a Workshop on Optimization under Uncertainty and Data-Driven Science and Engineering at Duke University.

 

Dec 2016. Charles Freundlich defends his PhD thesis entitled "Decentralized State Estimation using Robotic Sensor Networks".

 

Sep 2016. Michael M. Zavlanos is invited to attend the 2016 NAE US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.

 

May 2016. Nikolaos Chatzipanagiotis wins the 2015-2016 MEMS Outstanding Dissertation Research Award.

 

Apr 2016. Yan Zhang defends his MS thesis entitled "Active Landmark Localization using Mobile Stereo Vision: Experimental Validation".

 

Mar 2016. Luke Calkins wins an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP).

 

Sep 2015. New NSF grant on designing agile and smart manufacturing systems.

 

Aug 2015. Nikolaos Chatzipanagiotis defends his PhD thesis entitled "Distributed Optimization Algorithms for Networked Systems".

 

May 2015. Nithesh Reddy Nelvoy defends his MS thesis entitled "Communication Aware Motion Control of Mobile Wireless Networks: Experimental Validation".

 

Dec 2014. The paper "Distributed Simultaneous Coverage and Communication Control by Mobile Sensor Networks" receives the Best Student Paper Award at GlobalSIP 2014.

 

Apr 2014. Michael M. Zavlanos receives the ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award.

 

Oct 2013. New NSF NeTS grant on developing optimal communication methods for fast multi-agent coordination over networks.

 

Jul 2013. New NSF RI grant on controlling teams of mobile microrobots for advanced manufacturing applications.

 

Mar 2013. New NSF NeTS grant on controlling teams of autonomous mobile beamformers.

 

Nov 2012. Charles Freundlich defends his MS thesis entitled "A Hybrid Control Approach to the Next-Best-View Problem using Stereo Vision".

 

Aug 2012. New NSF MRI grant for the acquisition of a large volume, high resolution, motion capture system.

 

Jul 2011. The senior design project "Ped-Aware" is featured in Traffic Technology International.

 

Mar 2011. Michael M. Zavlanos receives the 2010-2011 Provost Award in recognition of outstanding achievements in research and scholarship, awarded by the Stevens Institute of Technology.

 

Feb 2011. Michael M. Zavlanos receives the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.

 

Nov 2007. The paper "Genetic Network Identification using Convex Programming" is invited for poster presentation as one of the best performers in the DREAM2 Challenge.

 

Dec 2006. The paper "A Dynamical Systems Approach to Weighted Graph Matching​" is a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at CDC 2006.

 

Apr 2005. Michael M. Zavlanos receives the 2001-2002 Award of Academic Excellence in Engineering Sciences (Best Diploma Thesis Award), awarded by the Technical Chamber of Greece.

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