Skand
I am a postdoc at UT Austin 🤘 working with Roberto Martín-Martín in the RobIN lab. Previously, I was visiting the WEIRD lab at the University of Washington 🐺, collaborating with Abhishek Gupta and Jesse Zhang on fast real-world adaptation of policies using world models.
I received my Ph.D. from Oregon State University 🦫, where I was advised by Fuxin Li and Stefan Lee. My dissertation, Efficient and Robust Robot Learning, proposed methods to build robots that keep working – making them (a) more energy-efficient, (b) resilient to sensory failures, (c) robust to viewpoint and lighting changes, and (d) adaptable to new tasks via 3D point dynamics models.
I am interested in developing systems and algorithms that enable robots to learn and continuously adapt to complex tasks in the real world.
Previous Research Life
Previously, I worked with Sungjin Ahn on object-centric world models and RL. Before that, I was worked with Venkatesh Babu at the Indian Institute of Science. I graduated with Bachelors of Technology (B.Tech) degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar where I was advised by Narayanan Krishnan for my Bachelor’s Thesis. During my undergrad, I also worked with Deepti Bathula and Abhinav Dhall.