Faculty Members

Erdem Bıyık   Erdem is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Systems. His research interests broadly cover robot learning, human-robot interaction, and multi-agent systems. He is especially interested in developing algorithms that enable robots to efficiently learn from various forms of human feedback.

Postdocs and Visiting Scholars

Ruiqi Wang   Ruiqi is a postdoctoral fellow in the Computer Science Department. He received his Ph.D. from Purdue University. His research focuses on enabling robots to learn efficiently from humans and align with human intent.

PhD Students

	Pavel Czempin   Pavel is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. He is interested in generalization and safe off-distribution behavior in reinforcement learning, robot learning, and trustworthy AI.
	Yigit Korkmaz   Yigit is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. He is interested in robot learning from various forms of human feedback, including explicit forms such as demonstrations and comparisons, and more implicit forms like gestures.
	Yimin Tang    (Co-advised with Sven Koenig) Yimin is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. His research is focused on Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF). He is also interested in foundation models, world models, and deep reinforcement learning.
	Yutai Zhou    (Co-advised with Stephen Tu) Yutai is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. He is broadly interested reinforcement learning from preference feedback, disentangled representation learning, and offline robotic policy evaluation.
	Ayano Hiranaka    (Co-advised with Daniel Seita) Ayano is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. She is interested in building AI agents that co-evolve with humans, focusing on systems where humans and agents learn from and adapt to one another as they expand their capabilities together.
	Bo-Ruei Huang   Bo-Ruei is a PhD student in the Computer Science Department. His research goal is to build robots that learn to assist humans in their daily lives. Specifically, he explores how to leverage abstraction to enable dexterous manipulation in unstructured, open-world environments.

MS Students

	Abhinav Srivatsa   Abhinav is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Aditeya Kamlesh Prajapati   Aditeya is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Alekya Ramani Nalagandla   Alekya is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Anirudh Kavle   Anirudh is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Cagan Bakirci   Cagan is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Eisuke Hirota   Eisuke is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Haiyun Lyu   Haiyun is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Haobai Zhan   Haobai is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Hugo Albert Bonet   Hugo is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Julia Chun   Julia is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.
	Mousumi Das   Mousumi is an MS student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
	Yusen Luo   Yusen is an MS student in the Computer Science Department.

Undergraduate Students

	Alina Du   Alina is an undergrduate in the Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments.
	Aric Zhang   Aric is an undergrduate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
	Austin Tsai   Austin is an undergrduate in the Computer Science Department.
	Kevin Kim   Kevin is an undergrduate in the Computer Science and Mathematics Departments.
	Ryan Li   Ryan is an undergrduate in the Applied Mathematics Department.
	Urvi Bhuwania   Urvi is an undergraduate in the Computer Science Department.
	Yifan Song   Yifan is an undergrduate in the Computer Science an Applied Mathematics Departments.

Visiting Researchers

Fatemeh Bahrani   Fatemeh is a visiting researcher in Lira Lab.

PhD/Postdoc Alumni

	Anthony Liang    (Co-advised with Stephen Tu) PhD, CS (Next: Research Scientist at Toyota Research Institute) Thesis: " Data-efficient Robot Learning using Natural Human Guidance "
	Jesse Zhang    (Co-advised with Joseph Lim and Jesse Thomason) PhD, CS (Next: Postdoc at University of Washington) Thesis: " Scaling Robot Adaptation with Large Model Guidance "
	Ayush Jain    (Co-advised with Joseph Lim) PhD, CS (Next: Research Scientist at Meta) Thesis: " Decision Making in Complex Action Spaces "
	Sumedh Sontakke    (Co-advised with Laurent Itti) PhD, CS (Next: Member of Technical Staff at Amazon Frontier AI and Robotics) Thesis: " Foundation Models for Embodied AI "

Other Alumni

	Asmaa Hassan   MS, CS 2026 (Next: PhD at USC)
	Abha Jha   MS, CS 2026 (Next: Founding Engineer at One Zyme)
	Ruopeng Huang   MS, CS 2025 (Next: PhD at UCLA)
	Zhaoyang Li   Visiting Researcher (Next: PhD at Rutgers University)
	Xinhu Li   Visiting Researcher (Next: PhD at National University of Singapore)
	Dhanush Varma   MS, CS 2025 (Next: PhD at University of Colorado Boulder)
	Matthew Hong   MS, CS 2025 (Next: PhD at UT Austin)
	Jiahui Zhang   Visiting Researcher, EE 2023-2025 (Next: PhD at UT Dallas)
	Jaiv Doshi   Undergraduate, CS 2025 (Next: Research Scientist at Tangible Robotics)
	Zhaojing Yang   MS, CS 2024 (Next: PhD at UC San Diego)
	Thomas Reeves   MS, CS 2024 (Next: PhD at USC)
	James Qian   Undergraduate, CS 2024 (Next: Transferred to Stanford University)
	Miru Jun   Undergraduate, CS 2024 (Next: Data Engineer at US Navy)
	Sunny Agrawal   Research Intern 2024 (Next: Continuing studies at Ohio State University)
	Eisuke Hirota   Research Intern 2024 (Next: MIT Lincoln Laboratory → MS at USC)
	Megumi Ondo   Research Intern 2024 (Next: Continuing studies at UC Santa Barbara)
	Shreya Ramanujam   Research Intern 2024 (Next: MS at Stanford University)
	Zijian Zhang   Research Intern 2024 (Next: Continuing studies at Tsinghua University)