I am a first year PhD student in computer science at Rice University advised by Prof. Lydia Kavraki. Previously,
I received my undergraduate degrees in conputer science and mathematics at Purdue University, where I worked under Prof. Zachary Kingston.
As of now, I am broadly interested in real-time task and motion planning and its applications in medical robotics. I hope to
explore how we can achieve responsive planning using algorithmic or hardware enabled techniques, as well as how we can obtain acceptable
safety guarantees. I would also like to see how we can most effectively marry the expertise of roboticists and medical professionals to produce
the most effective care possible.
Formalities aside, I enjoy anything involving logical and strategic thinking; I am working my way upwards in chess and rock climbing. I am decent at
most racket sports, particularly tennis. I like to play Elden Ring and Civilization VI in my free time, and casually do some fiction writing and game development.
I hate web development.
Academics
Rice University, 2026-Present
PhD Computer science
Advised by Lydia Kavraki
Purdue University (West Lafayette), 2022-2026
BS Computer science honors
BS Mathematics
Highest distinction, Dean's list
Experience
PhD Student, Kavraki Lab, 2026
• TBD
AFRL Scholar Intern, Air Force Research Lab, 2026
• Pioneered autonomous pipeline for LLM assisted OSINT aggregation and analysis. Pipeline capable of processing
hundreds of articles/documents on the order of minutes, far faster than human capabilities. LLM-as-a-judge
benchmarks indicate custom retrieval and prompting strategy improves quality of pipeline generated surveys.
• Supported development of multi-agent strategic decision-making systems for adversarial RPO missions.
Implemented LLM collaborative task planner for benchmarking against meta-RL agent.
• Developed real-time LLM-enhanced mission analysis agent for simulated RPO missions
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Purdue CoMMA Lab, 2025
• Pursuing first author publications under Prof. Zak Kingston
• Led development of lab's real-time planning demonstration w/ Franka robotic manipulators. Engineered C++ library for pointcloud perception/localization and velocity-based control system for Franka arm.
• Implemented reactive teleoperation system with Franka arms and Valve Index for expert demonstration data collection via weighted optimization-based inverse kinematics. Extended to bimanual setup with collision avoidance.
• Collaborated with Purdue Camp Lab in sim2real policy transfer of fully pixel-based concept embedding model with VLM reward shaping. Designed wrist camera mount via Solidworks and implemented real-world perception and action system.
• Partnered with Queen's University ESP research group on analysis of real-time replanning feasibility. Implemented real world experiment of real-time ASAO planning w/ AORRTC, collected metrics on runtime, path length, etc.
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Purdue University, 2024-2026
• CS 18200: Foundations of Computer Science (Spring 2026)
◦ Attending weekly TA meetings, answering questions on online forum, holding office hours, proctoring exams.
• CS 38100: Intro. to the Analysis of Algos. (Fall 2025)
◦ Holding office hours to assist in problem solving. Grading assignments and offering constructive feedback.
• CS 25200: Systems Programming (Spring 2025)
◦ Held office hours, assisted in programming labs, graded assignments, helped with exam grading and proctoring
• CS 19300: Tools (Fall 2024)
◦ Assisted freshman CS students in learning fundamental software tools and participated in info panel regarding Purdue CS
Publications
Revisiting Replanning from Scratch: Real-Time Incremental Planning with Fast Almost-Surely Asymptotically Optimal Planners
Mitchell E. C. Sabbadini, Andrew H. Liu, Joseph Ruan, Tyler S. Wilson, Zachary Kingston, and Jonathan D. Gammell
(Accepted ICRA 2026)
HJCD-IK: GPU-Accelerated Inverse Kinematics through Batched Hybrid Jacobian Coordinate Descent
Cael Yasutake, Andrew H. Liu, Zachary Kingston, and Brian Plancher
(Accepted IROS 2026)
CDE: Concept-Driven Exploration for Reinforcement Learning
Le Mao, Andrew H. Liu, Renos Zabounidis, Zachary Kingston, and Joseph Campbell
(Accepted IROS 2026)
Outreach
Northfield Jr./Sr. High School
I traveled with Zak and fellow lab member Miras to Indiana's Northfield High to assist with a talk and demonstration about Purdue computer science and robotics.
I had the privilege of talking about some of my experiences in Purdue's CS program and shared some insights about studying CS, and the fun I have doing robotics research.
I also got to pilot around the Spot for a bit.
Below are some pictures from the visit.
Purdue CS Department Visit
Once again assisted Zak with another high school event about CS and robotics, this time taking place in Lawson Commons with a quick break for lunch.
Got some much needed exercise carrying the Spot to and from the event, piloted the Spot around again, and got to interact with some of the students.
Sadly, I couldn't find pictures of this one.