About

I’m a robotics PhD candidate in my fourth year at Carnegie Mellon University. My research is generally related to autonomous navigation for planetary rovers, especially perception and mapping as they pertain to navigation. I am interested in topics ranging from neural rendering techniques to active perception, to the extent that they can be applied to planetary exploration. My ultimate goal is to develop terrain models that contain both geometric and scientific information, model directional uncertainty, and incorporate spatial and other correlations. I believe that creating models such as these - along with planners that are tailor-made to use these maps and the richer information contained within them - will enable improved navigation and science target selection. I am a recipient of the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) fellowship for my research.

I took a somewhat unconventional path to robotics. After graduating from Georgetown University with a BA in Mathematics, I worked at Berkeley Research Group, an economic consulting firm, prior to returning to school. This experience gave me the opportunity to discover what I liked in a job, what I would change, and drove me to think hard about my professional and personal goals. I decided to pursue field robotics with a focus on planetary rovers to gain hands-on experience with field experiments, continue my applied statistics and software education, and contribute to planetary exploration. I’d like to encourage others to pursue robotics as well, so I volunteer with Girls of Steel, an all-women and gender minority FIRST robotics team affiliated with Carnegie Mellon.