Elena is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Robotics Department at U-M since August 2022. Her research interest is in developing autonomous unmanned vehicles that are capable of intelligent planning and decision-making. As a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow, she will continue working on developing model-based reinforcement learning algorithms that enable autonomous agents to generalize and adapt to unseen real-world environments.
Prior to joining U-M, she was a Section Supervisor and Senior Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. Her dissertation was on modeling the system dynamics of the cyclocopter and developing control strategies for a novel transformer drone with ground, air, and surface modes of operation.
- AI Mentor: Katie Skinner, Robotics, College of Engineering
- Science Mentor: Dimitra Panagou, Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering
- Research Theme: Intelligent visual and flow-based navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles