People
Principal Investigator
Dr. Takashi Tanaka
Takashi Tanaka is an Associate Professor at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He received his B.S. from the University of Tokyo and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Tanaka was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2015, and a postdoctoral researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology from 2015 to 2017. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin between 2017 and 2024, where he was an Associate Professor in 2024. Dr. Tanaka's research interests include control theory and its applications, most recently the information-theoretic perspectives of optimal control problems. He received the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, and the NSF Career Award.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Kaoru Teranishi
Dr. Teranishi is a JSPS Overseas Research Fellow... of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a visiting scholar at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical and intelligent systems engineering from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 2024. Website Expand More
Graduate Students
Jihoon Suh
PhD student in AAE at Purdue... My current research is on encrypted control, where the objective is to protect the privacy of sensitive data such as personal, financial, or strategically valuable information while they are being processed by a control system. I served in the US Army for 6 years. Website Expand More
Ronald Ogden
PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin... My research interests include event-based estimation and stochastic control. Prior to coming to UT, I was a flight test engineer at Wisk Aero, where I tested autonomous eVTOL aircraft. In my free time, I enjoy climbing, language learning, and puzzle solving. Expand More
Moses Hansen
PhD student in AAE at Purdue... Moses is a PhD student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Brigham Young University in 2024, where he applied deep learning methods on the computer vision team in the Record Linking Lab. He also worked with the Air Force Research Laboratory, developing deep reinforcement learning techniques for competitive, high-stakes multi-agent satellite control scenarios. His current research combines information theory with classical control to design autonomous systems capable of deception-resistant path planning in competitive, multi-agent environments. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, lifting weights, and spending time outdoors. Expand More
Sashank Modali
PhD student in AAE at Purdue... My research interests lie at the intersection of robotics, multi-agent systems, and stochastic control. Prior to joining Purdue, I completed my Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras, India. In my spare time, I enjoy playing squash and traveling. Expand More
Dongheon Lee
MS student in ECE at Purdue... My research interests include task allocation and path planning for multi-agent systems. Prior to coming to Purdue, I worked as a software engineer at EpiSci and Applied Intuition, where I developed autonomous small UAV applications. In my free time, I enjoy playing soccer, running, and watching movies. Expand More
Rylie Anderson
MS student in ECE at Purdue... My research interests are in control theory and aerospace. Prior to joining Purdue, I completed my Bachelor's in Computer Science at the US Air Force Academy. Outside of research and classes, I enjoy running, reading, and jiu-jitsu. Expand More
Owen Bishop
MS student in AAE at Purdue... My research interests are primarily focused on event-based sensing and transmission, with applications to control systems. I completed my Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. In my free time, I enjoy reading science-fiction and fantasy books, and playing board games. Expand More
Undergraduate Students
Meg Kumar
Student in AAE at Purdue... My name is Meg Kumar and I am a junior study aerospace engineering. In this lab, I am focusing on working with the pencil balancing project, specifically the mechanic side. I enjoy working with the physical system of the invented pendulum project, so I am developing robotic arms to assist with the balancing aspect. Another part of the project I am working on is the image processing with event cameras, to provide information to the system. Expand More
Lucca Mo
Student in AAE at Purdue... I am studying the dynamics of a falling pencil as a model for an unstable control system. I am deriving the equations of motion and converting them into a state–space representation (A,B,C,D) to analyze stability, while also building MATLAB simulations to visualize how the pencil behaves over time, including plots of its angle response. I am preparing a poster for the Fall Undergraduate Research Conference to present the modeling and simulation results. In addition, I am contributing to the experimental side by helping with the setup and testing of the pencil-balancing apparatus, documenting my work with notes and photos. Expand More
Ishaan Agrawal
Student in AAE at Purdue... My research interests include optimal control for aerospace and autonomous systems; recently, I'm interested in how model predictive control can be adapted for security. I like soccer and astrophotography. Expand More
Atharva Awasthi
Student in AAE at Purdue... My research interests include optimal control methods for trajectory and path planning, estimation, astrodynamics, and competitive systems. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, dancing, and playing board games. Expand More
Austin Lika
Student in AAE at Purdue... My name is Austin Lika, and I am an undergraduate researcher working on the Neuromorphic Sensing project. I am a Junior in Electrical Engineering and Minoring in Global Engineering Studies and in Japanese. My research interests include control systems and robotics. In my free time I like to play sports, photography, and traveling. Expand More
Alumni
- Vrushabh Zinage (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2025, currently at CalTech)
- Apurva Patil (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2025, currently at Tensor Auto)
- Michael Hibbard (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2024, currently at Starfish Space)
- Hyunho Jung (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2024, currently at the Republic of Korea Air Force)
- Travis Cuvelier (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2024, currently at MITRE Corporation)
- Ali Reza Pedram (Graduated from UT Austin with PhD in 2023, currently at Georgia Tech)
- Binghan He (Postdoc researcher at UT Austin until 2022, currently Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio
- Riku Funada (Postdoc researcher at UT Austin until 2020, currently Assistant Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology)
- Jeb Stefan (Graduated from UT Austin with M.S. in 2019, currently at Odyssey Space Research)