Autonomous Teamwork: Annual Crew Listings and Select Profiles

2024-2025 Team

Team Leads:

•  Aron Harder – CS, PhD – Safety and Autonomy Team Lead and Co-Technical Team Lead
•  Amar Kulkarni – CS, PhD – Co-Technical Team Lead
•  Jingyun Ning – CpE, PhD - Vehicle Dynamics & Control Team Lead
•  Shreepa Parthaje – CS, UG - Perception Team Lead
•  Srikar Gouru – CS, UG – Motion Planning Team Lead

Senior Crew: 

•  Trent Weiss – CS, PhD
•  Siddharth Lakkoju – CS, UG
•  Michael Fatemi – CS, UG
•  Aditya Kak – CS, UG
•  Akash Pamal – CS UG
•  David Xiang – CS UG
•  Annabel Li – CS UG
•  Preetham Minchu – CS UG
•  Viraj Samant – CS UG

New Crew Members:

•  Niklas Holle – Visiting student (U. of Stuttgart)
•  Nicholas Hoffs – CS UG
•  Praggnya Kanungo – CS UG
•  Rahul Andurkar – CS UG
•  Ryland Birchmeier – CS UG
•  Sarina Condon – CS UG
•  Suzu Paudel – CS UG
•  Zaid Contractor – CS UG
•  Philip Naveen – CS UG
•  Kingsley Kim
•  Nicolo Schianchi – CS UG
•  John Zoscak – CS UG
•  Hamid Roodabeh - ECE, PhD
•  Vagul Mahadevan – CS UG
•  Kato Watsen – ECE UG
•  Barrett Ruth – CS UG
•  William Kaiser – CS UG
•  Karthik Bhargav – CS UG

Alumni:

•  Varundev Sukhil (2019-2022) – CS PhD – Associate Scientist – Exponent
PhD Thesis: A Modular Approach to Multi-Agent Autonomous Racing: Design, Implementation, and Verification
•  John Chrosniak (2021-23) – CS MS – Robotics Engineering at Leidos (Autonomy Group)
MS Thesis: Deep Dynamics: Vehicle Dynamics Modeling with a Physics-Informed Neural Network for Autonomous Racing.
•  Emory Ducote (2021-23) – CS MS – Robotics Engineering at Applied Research Laboratories
•  John Link (2021-2024) – CS UG – SpaceX  
•  Utkarsh Chirimar (2022-23) CS MS -  Amazon
MS Thesis - Enhancing Monocular Obstacle Detection in Autonomous Racing with Auto-Labeled Camera Images and LiDAR Detections.
•  Justin Guo – (2022-23) - CS UG
•  Max Dawkins – (2022-23) - CS MS
•  Pallavi Kulkarni - (2022-23) – MAE UG
•  Simeng Hao - (2022-23) – CS UG
 

Amar Kulkarnim, Motion Planning Team Lead

I started at UVA as a master’s student, but after working with Dr. Madhur Behl and on the Cavalier Autonomous Racing team during the inaugural Indy Autonomous Challenge, I am continuing as a Ph.D. student, eager to do more research in robotics!

When we got to Vegas this year, all of our hard work in simulation, the lab, and Putnam Park was evident. Our steering controller was extremely stable, and easily brought the car to over 120 mph! The sense of relief and excitement was palpable, and each of our almost untested systems worked incredibly well in the real world, allowing us to not only qualify, but qualify for the race ahead of every other team, allowing us a first seed. Each of our testing days was spent integrating high speed control, overtake planning, and perception, and to watch them all come together beautifully was a truly satisfying result. 

Seeing the seven undergraduate students who joined us take charge of the perception system and really improve it was a tribute to experiential learning as a whole.

While our car was able to overtake at 140 mph on race day, watching everything come together the day before and see the car make its first overtake at just 65 mph, made our whole team literally jump for joy. Not only was the system coming together successfully, a great result, but seeing the seven undergraduate students who joined us take charge of the perception system and really improve it, was a tribute to experiential learning as a whole.

John Link '24, Drivetrain and Longitudinal Dynamics

Even though I am graduating this spring (2024), I will definitely be keeping tabs on the awesome successes of the team! When I started my undergraduate degree here at UVA, I never expected I would be in charge of writing the throttle and brakes controller for a 200-mph autonomous racecar. I think that is a testament to the amazing support of the engineering school and even more so the mentorship and advisement that Professor Behl has given me and every other member. His unwavering support despite crashes and setbacks has allowed me to learn and better prepare for my career in robotics and unmanned systems. Who knows, maybe one day I'll return for a graduate degree at UVA!

Ekow Daniels, Remote Crew

I got involved because autonomous vehicles was an area of interest that I wanted to explore. I’m on the vehicle dynamics team so a lot of what I learned was related to the dynamics/forces that act on the car. I did some computational stuff relating to this and delved into improving brake efficiency. I’m pretty excited for next year. I am in Singapore for study abroad, so hopefully I can contribute what I can. I’d like to devote a lot of my time to help improve John Link’s excellent brake model.

https://autonomousracing.dev/crew