Brief Bio
Neel is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Autonomy working with Professors Atlas Wang and Ufuk Topcu. He is part of the Autonomous Systems Group and the VITA Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin. His current research is centered at the intersection of generative AI, assured active perception, prediction, and trustworthy sequential decision making for autonomous systems.
Neel received his PhD in Mechatronics Engineering from University of Waterloo in 2023. During his PhD, Neel led efforts on the WATonoBus project at MVS Lab working on software and algorithmic development of perception and prediction modules required for Canada’s first autonomous shuttle bus approved via the ministry’s autonomous vehicle pilot. During his PhD program, Neel worked at General Motors R&D as a Software Engineering Intern and developed deep learning models for enhancing vehicle state estimation. Prior to this, he worked at Clearpath Robotics as an Applications Engineering Intern working with ROS and OpenCV for various vision based projects.
Neel has also concurrently been a visiting research scholar since 2021 at the NODE Lab at University of Alberta working on NODE lab's autonomous vehicle.
Prior to joining the direct PhD program at University of Waterloo (yes, Neel was directly admitted to a PhD from Bachelor's), Neel received his BASc. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mechatronics and Robotics from University of Toronto. During this time, he conducted research with Professor Yu Sun on micro and nano robotics and interned at Clearpath Robotics and was awarded NSERC Research Awards for both.
