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PhD in Computer Science

University of Maryland at College Park

MS in Computer Science

Georgia Institute of Technology

Specialization in Computational Perception & Robotics

BS in Physics

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Specialization in Astrophysics

Summer Graduate Research Intern

US Department of Transportation (USDOT) Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence (HASS COE)

Worked as an intern at the USDOT Highly Automated Systems Safety Center of Excellence (HASS COE), applying data analytics and algorithmic methods to historical autonomous vehicle crash data.

• Developed a data pruning and matching algorithm to reconcile autonomous vehicle crash records across the NHTSA Standing General Order (SGO) and California DMV datasets, using geographic location, manufacturer, narrative text similarity, and incident month.
• Conducted exploratory data analysis to identify trends and discrepancies across the two datasets, including differences in manufacturer reporting and potential gaps in crash reporting.
• Supported development of automated crash typology classification by integrating complementary crash datasets to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the circumstances and scenarios preceding autonomous vehicle crashes.

Summer Graduate Research Intern

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)

Co-authored From Protest to Proxy War: A Socio-Technical Overview of the Evolution of Hacktivism, a white paper examining ideologically motivated cybercrimes and their intersection with modern conflict, psychology, and state involvement.

• Modeled pathways state involvement in hacktivist cells, including state-encouraged 'proxy hacktivism' exemplified by Russia's KillNet and Ukraine's IT Army where governments covertly guide or seed target lists for semi-independent hacktivist collectives.
• Assessed emerging cyber threats such as AI-assisted social engineering/phishing, ransomware-as-a-service (e.g., GhostSec's GhostLocker), deepfake-enabled social engineering, and drone hijacking of cyber-physical systems.

Machine Learning & Hardware Engineer Science Collaborator

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Collaborated with NASA researchers to develop a unique Linux build and testing platform to evaluate communications-limited deep learning algorithms on Xilinx’s Zybo.

• Performed benchmark analysis to cross-compare the FPGA performance with other development boards and application specific integrated circuits with regards to accuracy, speed, memory usage, and performance.
• Trained a new classified hyperspectral dataset to develop a TFLite model integrable with the Zybo platform.

Autonomy & Robotics Rotational Researcher

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Department of the Navy

Collaborated with NRL researchers on a cross-organizational project focused on herding of non-cooperative robots in complex environments.

• Simulated and experimentally validated a previously proposed approach for a pursuer-evader strategy involving navigation around convex obstacles to a goal location.

Operations Research Analyst / Autonomous Systems Scientist

NAWCAD Patuxent River, Department of the Navy

Project lead for three internal multi-agent autonomous systems development projects.

• Explored centralized vs distributed coordination architectures to evaluate how communication constraints affect multi‑agent task allocation and collaboration efficiency.
• Built a modular autonomous systems framework and conducted large‑scale simulation experiments (hardware testing paused amidst COVID restrictions); findings were presented at three internal Navy conferences.
• Extended the framework to handle dynamic environments through moving‑obstacle navigation, multi‑task optimization, and collaboration planning to minimize path conflicts.

Dean's Fellowship

The Graduate School at UMD College Park