People of the IDM Lab

The following researchers are currently members of the lab, besides Sven Koenig:

The following students are currently members of the lab:

The following researchers are alumni of the lab:

The following students are alumni of the lab:

The following visitors are alumni of the lab:


Current Researchers

Dr. T.K. Satish Kumar

Satish is an Associate Research Professor at the Computer Science Department of USC and leads the Collaboratory for Algorithmic Techniques and Artificial Intelligence at USC's Information Sciences Institute. He received a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering in 1999 from Indian Institute of Technology at Guwahati, an M.S. in Computer Science in 2003 from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2005 for his dissertation "Contributions to Algorithmic Techniques in Automated Reasoning about Physical Systems." He has been a Visiting Student at the NASA Ames Research Center, a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, a Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a Visiting Assisting Professor at the University of West Florida and a Senior Research and Development Scientist at Mission Critical Technologies. More information can be found on his homepage.

Dr. Thomy Phan

Thomy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science of USC. He received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Munich University of Applied Sciences in 2015 and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from LMU Munich in 2017. He received his Dr. rer. nat (Ph.D .equivalent) from LMU Munich for his dissertation "Emergence and Resilience in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning" in 2023. Thomy is interested in AI, focusing on Multi-Agent Decision-Making based on Reinforcement Learning and Planning techniques. More information can be found on hia homepage.

Current Students

Shao-Hung Chan (Graduate Student)

Shao-Hung received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University in 2017 and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2019. He is interested in Artificial Intelligence, Heuristic Search, and Robotics. He received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship in 2019 and a Ph.D. Sandwich Program Fellowship at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2021. More information can be found on his homepage.

Taoan Huang (Graduate Student)

Taoan received a B.Eng. in Computer Science from the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University in 2019. He is interested in artificial intelligence with a focus on multi-agent systems, combinatorial optimization, machine learning, computational sustainability, and computational game theory. He received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship in 2019. More information can be found on his homepage.

Christopher Leet (Graduate Student)

Christopher received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Astrophysics from Yale University in 2018 (with distinction in Computer Science and distinction in Astrophysics). He is interested in designing abstractions to help engineers orchestrate large scale multi-robot systems and discovering algorithms to implement these abstractions in a performant fashion. He has been a research scientist at Facebook and authored open source code to remove atmospheric interference from images taken by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's EXPRES spectrograph.

Han Zhang (Graduate Student)

Han received a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Tongji University in 2016 and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2018. He is interested in path planning, heuristic search and machine learning. He received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship in 2019.

Yi Zheng (Graduate Student)

Yi received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southampton in 2019. He is interested in artificial intelligence, heuristic search, multi-agent systems, machine learning, and planning for robotics. More information can be found on his homepage.

Former Researchers

Dr. Masabumi Furuhata

Masabumi received a B.S. and M.S. in Management Science from the University of Tsukuba in 1996 and 1999, respectively, and a Ph.D. (tres honorable avec felicitations du jury) in Computer Science from the University of Western Sydney and University of Toulouse 1 Capitole in 2010 for his dissertation "E-Market Mechanism Design for Supply Chain Management." He won a Japan Society for Artificial Intelligence Incentive Award in 2010. He also won first prize in the Trading Agent Competition in Mechanism Design (CAT competition) as a team member of Jackaroo in 2009. He is interested in mechanism design, multi-agent systems and data mining for transportation, robotics, finance, and supply chain management. He worked on designing mechanisms for tomorrow's ride-sharing market and multi-robot coordination. He was part of our lab for 34 months from 2011 to 2013.

Former Students

Dr. Liron Cohen (Former Graduate Student)

Liron received a B.S. in Computer Engineering in 2007 and an M.S. in Computer Science in 2012, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Liron is interested in combinatorial problems related to constraint-based reasoning and symbolic planning. Specifically, he is looking at novel algorithmic techniques for exploiting structure in such combinatorial problems. He received an Outstanding Paper Award in the Robotics Track of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling in 2016, a Best Teaching Award from the Computer Science Department of USC in 2016, and a Technology Commercialization Award from the USC Stevens Center for Innovation in 2019. More information can be found on his homepage.

Previously seen: Software Engineer at Waymo Last seen: Technical Lead at Mujin

Kenny Daniel (Former Graduate Student)

Kenny received a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 and subsequently a Master's degree from USC. He placed 6th in the ACM Southern California Regional Programming Contest (out of 63 teams) in 2007, 1st in the USC Programming Contest (out of 31 students) in 2007, 2nd in the ACM Southern California Regional Programming Contest (out of 73 teams) in 2006, and 2nd in the USC Programming Contest (out of 49 students) in 2006.

Last seen: Cofounder of Algorithmia, Inc. Read about Algorithmia in Wired and in the USC News.

Dr. David Furcy (Former Graduate Student)

David received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Universite de Technologie de Compiegne (France) in 1993, an M.S. in Computer Science from the Universite de Technologie de Compiegne (France) in 1994, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Iowa in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 for his dissertation "Speeding up the Convergence of Online Heuristic Search and Scaling up Offline Heuristic Search." He was nominated for the Best Paper Award of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling in 2004. More information can be found on his homepage.

Previously seen: Interim Professor at Blackburn College
Last seen: Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Dr. Jiaoyang Li (Former Graduate Student)

Jiaoyang received a B.Eng. in Automation from Tsinghua University in 2017 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2022 for her dissertation "". She is interested in artificial intelligence, heuristic search, scheduling and planning for robotics, transportation, and supply chain management. More information can be found on her homepage.

Last seen: Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Yaxin Liu (Former Graduate Student)

Yaxin received a B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 1994, an M.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005 for his dissertation "Decision-Theoretic Planning Under Risk-Sensitive Planning Objectives." He received IBM Fellowship Awards in 2002 and 2003, the Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award from the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007.

Previously seen: Research Scientist at the University of Texas at Austin
Previously seen: Lead Scientist at Isaac
Last seen: Software Engineer at Google

Dr. Hang Ma (Former Graduate Student)

Hang received a B.S. (First Class with Distinction) in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in 2012, a B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology from Zhejiang University in 2012 and an M.S. in Computer Science from McGill University in 2014. Hang is interested in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. He received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship in 2014, an Outstanding Paper Award in the Robotics Track of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling in 2016, and a Technology Commercialization Award from the USC Stevens Center for Innovation in 2019. More information can be found on his homepage.

Last seen: Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University

Dr. Alex Nash (Former Graduate Student)

Alex received a B.S. in Computer Science from Yale University in 2004, an M.S. in Computer Science from USC in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2012 for his dissertation "Any-Angle Path Planning." He received a fellowship from Northrop Grumman Corporation, where he had worked since 2005 and his IR&D team had received two Gold Awards.

Previously seen: Group Lead at Northrop Grumman Corporation
Last seen: Group Lead at Amazon Prime Air

Dr. Xiaoxun Sun (Former Graduate Student)

Xiaoxun received a B.E. in Computer Science from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2003, an M.S. (with honors) in Media and Knowledge Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2005, an M.S. in Computer Science from USC in 2008, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2013 for his dissertation "Incremental Search-Based Path-Planning for Moving Target Search." He received a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellowship in 2007.

Previously seen: Software Engineer at Google
Last seen: Founder and CEO of LaiOffer

Tansel Uras (Former Graduate Student)

Tansel received a B.S. in Computer Science (with a minor in Mathematics) in 2009, an M.S. in Computer Science in 2011 from Sabanci University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2019 for his dissertation "Speeding Up Path Planning on State Lattices and Grid Graphs by Exploiting Freespace Structure." He had the fastest entry in the Grid-Based Path Planning Competition among all optimal entries that solved all planning problems in 2012 and 2013. He received a Best Research Assistant Award from the Computer Science Department of USC in 2014, a Best Teaching Assistant Award from the Computer Science Department of USC in 2016, and a Technology Commercialization Award from the USC Stevens Center for Innovation in 2019.

Previously seen: Software Engineer at Waymo Last seen: Software Engineer at Motional

Dr. Daniel Wong (Former Undergraduate Student)

Daniel received a B.S in Computer Engineering/Computer Science from USC in 2009 and then entered the Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering at USC as a recipient of a USC Provost Graduate Fellowship. He was a recipient of the Rose Hills Foundation Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2009 and the Rose Hills Foundation Scholarship. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. More information can be found on his homepage.

Previously seen: Graduate Student at USC
Last seen: Associate Professor at the University of California at Riverside

Dr. Hong Xu (Former Graduate Student)

Hong received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2012. He is interested in combinatorial search problems, such as constraint satisfaction and optimization, in computer science, physics and other natural sciences. He received an Outstanding Paper Award in the Robotics Track of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling in 2016 and a Technology Commercialization Award from the USC Stevens Center for Innovation in 2019. More information can be found on his homepage.

Last seen: Software Engineer at IBM

Dr. William Yeoh (Former Graduate Student)

William received a B.S.E. (Magna cum Laude) and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University in Pennsylvania in 2004, an M.S. in Computer Science from USC in 2007, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2010 for his dissertation "Speeding up Distributed Constraint Optimization Search Algorithms." He received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the Computer Science Department of USC in both 2004 and 2007, was nominated for the University Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in 2008, received an Award for Excellence in Teaching from the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching in 2008, was nominated for the Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems in 2009, received the Outstanding Research Assistant Award from the Computer Science Department of USC in 2009, and is a member of both Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Tau Sigma. He was selected by IEEE Intelligent Systems in 2015 as one of the "AI's 10 to Watch." The call for nominations stated: "Every two years, IEEE Intelligent Systems acknowledges and celebrates 10 young stars in the field of AI as "AI's 10 to Watch." These accomplished researchers have all completed their doctoral work in the past five years. Despite being relatively junior in their career, each one has made impressive research contributions and had an impact in the literature - and in some cases, in real-world applications as well." More information can be found on his homepage.

Previously seen: Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Previously seen: Research Scientist at Singapore Management University
Previously seen: Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University
Last seen: Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis

Dr. Xiaoming Zheng (Former Graduate Student)

Xiaoming received a B.E. in Computer Science from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004, an M.S in Computer Science from USC in 2007, an M.A. in Economics from USC in 2008, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in 2014 for his dissertation "Auction and Negotiation Algorithms for Cooperative Task Allocations." Xiaoming is interested in coordinating agents with market mechanisms. Market mechanisms, such as auctions and negotiations, are decentralized approaches and appear to perform well in many situations. Auctions, for example, are efficient in terms of both the required amount of computation and communication (since information is compressed into numeric bids that the agents can compute in parallel) and can result in near-optimal task allocations. Market-based coordination algorithms apply to robotics, for example for planetary exploration or search and rescue. His research centers on exploring the trade-off between the computation/communication effort and the resulting team performance and on extending the functionality of market-based coordination algorithms. More information can be found on his homepage.

Last seen: Researcher at Facebook

Former Visitors

Giuseppe Caggianese

Giuseppe received a second-level degree in Computer Science in 2010 with a thesis on "A GPU Implementation of Path-Finding Algorithms for Massive Numbers of Agents in Dynamic Environments." Giuseppe is now a Ph.D. student in Methods and Technologies for Environmental Monitoring at the Department of Environmental Engineering and Physics, University of Basilicata (Italy). Giuseppe is interested in parallel programming with the CUDA architecture and general-purpose computing on GPUs, behavioral models for mobile agents, multi-agent path finding, real-time computer animation, motion planning with heuristic search, robot simulations, and sensors and sensing technologies for environmental applications. Giuseppe visited our lab for 12 months in 2012/2013.

Dr. Marcello Cirillo

Marcello received an M.S. in Computer Science Engineering in 2005 from Politecnico di Milano and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Örebro for his dissertation "Planning in Inhabited Environments: Human-Aware Task Planning and Activity Recognition". Marcello's main research interests are automated planning, graph search algorithms and their application to real-world domains. His research currently focuses on motion planning for non-holonomic vehicles and multi-robot coordination. Marcello visited our lab for 6 months in 2012/2013.

Dr. Ariel Felner

Ariel is an Associate Professor at Ben Gurion University (Israel). He received a B.S. with distinction from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1993, an M.S. from the same university in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University (Israel) in 2002 for his dissertation "Improving Search Techniques and Using them in Different Environments." He is interested in heuristic search. Ariel visited our lab for 6 months in 2006/2007 and 5.5 months in 2017. More information can be found on his homepage.

Dr. Jihee Han

Jihee received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Korea University in 2010, an M.S. from Seoul National University in 2014, and a Ph.D. from Korea University in 2017 for her dissertation "A Surrounding Point Set Approach to Mobile Robot Path Planning." She is interested in heuristic search, meta-heuristics, path planning, and drone/vehicle routing.

Dr. Carlos Hernández

Carlos is an Associate Professor at the Universidad Católica de la Ssma. Concepción (Chile). He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Universidad de Concepción (Chile) in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain) in 2008 for his dissertation "Bounded Propagation in Real-Time Heuristic Search." Carlos is interested in heuristic search, automated planning, real-time heuristic search, incremental heuristic search, path planning, multi-agent systems and sensor networks, among other topics. Carlos visited our lab for 3.5 months in 2009, 1 month in 2010, 8 months in 2011/2012, 1 month in 2013, and 2.5 months in 2017.


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research group celebrating a productive year

This page was automatically created by a bibliography maintenance system that was developed as part of an undergraduate research project, advised by Sven Koenig.


Home Page of Sven Koenig