Student Bios
Postdoctoral Researchers
Kunal Garg
Bio: Kunal is a postdoctoral associate in the REALM lab in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Prior to joining MIT, he spent a year with the Hybrid Systems Lab at UC Santa Cruz as a postdoctoral scholar. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India in 2016, Master of Science in Engineering degree in Aerospace Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2019 and PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in Aerospace Engineering in 2021. His research interests include Machine-learning approaches for safety of multi-agent systems, Control-theoretic methods for security of CPS, Optimization-based control design, Multi-agent distributed control, Finite-time stability theory for safe distributed control design, Hybrid/Switched-Systems: theory and applications, and Accelerated optimization methods.
Email: kgarg@mit.edu
Kwesi Rutledge
Bio: Kwesi Rutledge is a METEOR Postdoctoral Fellow working with Professors Chuchu Fan and Nicholas Roy in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research interests include Control Theory (especially adaptive control), Formal Methods (especially as it is applied to Control Systems), Robotic Manipulation, and Convex Optimization. Outside of research, he is excited by bicycling, entrepreneurship, reading, running, and much more.
Kwesi Rutledge obtained an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2015. After this, he obtained a Master’s Degree from the University of California , San Diego in 2017 while doing some research with Prof. Todd Coleman and then completed a PhD at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor in 2022 under the supervision of Necmiye Ozay.
Email:kwesir@mit.edu
Graduate Students
Charles Dawson
Bio: Hi! My name is Charles, and I’m a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. My research interests lie at the intersection of control theory, optimization, and systems theory in service of building safer and better-performing robots. Before attending MIT, I received my B.S. in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, CA. Outside of the lab, I like to bake bread and climb rocks.
Email: cbd@mit.edu
Yue Meng
Bio: My name is Yue, and I’m a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. I received my M.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC San Diego, and I got my B.S. in Automation from Tsinghua University. My research focuses on machine learning techniques for reliable planning, control, and safety verification. In my spare time, I like playing soccer and running.
Email: mengyue@mit.edu
Songyuan Zhang
Bio: Hi! My name is Songyuan. I am a second-year graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. I received my B.E. degree of Engineering Mechanics (Tsien Excellence in Engineering Program) at Tsinghua University. My research interests lie in learning safe and stable controllers for complex autonomous systems. In my spare time, I like photography, badminton and running.
Email: szhang21@mit.edu
Oswin So
Bio: Hi, I am an incoming graduate student at MIT AeroAstro. I graduated from Georgia Tech with a BS in CS, where I did research under Dr. Evangelos Theodorou. My interests are quite broad and range from constrained optimization, safety, multiagent planning, stochastic optimal control and deep PDE solvers. I like reading, cooking and learning new things in my spare time.
Email: oswinso@mit.edu
Yongchao Chen
Bio: Hi, I am a 2nd year graduate student at Harvard SEAS. I graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a BS in Mechanics. My previous researches are among solid mechanics and physics-informed machine learning. My current interests range from human-robot interaction, NLP, and robot planning. I like basketball, soccer, and history.
Email: ycchen98@mit.edu, yongchaochen@g.harvard.edu
Rujul Gandhi
Bio: Hello! I’m an MEng student in MIT EECS (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science). I received my S.B. at MIT in Linguistics and EECS. I’m currently interested in human language processing and perception, and the way computers interface with human language. Outside of academics, I enjoy rowing, dance, and organizing projects.
Email: rujul@mit.edu
Mingxin Yu
Bio: Hi! I’m a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. My research interests lie in the intersection of planning and control. My long-term goal is to build reliable and intelligent general-purpose robots. Prior to MIT, I received my B.S. in Physics from Peking University.
Email: yumx35@mit.edu