I am an Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Ph.D. candidate at the University
of Maryland (UMD), College Park, MD, USA, working with Professor John S. Baras, Distinguished University Professor and Endowed Lockheed Martin Chair
in Systems Engineering, and Professor Calin Belta, Brendan Iribe Endowed Professor of ECE and Computer Science. I study risk-sensitive decision making for robotic systems, focusing on how principled uncertainty modeling and risk-sensitive optimization can enable robust physical intelligence in multi-fingered robotic grasping and dexterous manipulation. At UMD, I am affiliated with the Institute for Systems Research, the EXplainable and Assured Control for AuTonomy (EXACT) lab, the Systems Engineering and Integration lab, and the Maryland Robotics Center (MRC). I have also received the Dean's Fellowship from UMD's Graduate School and the Microsoft Diversity in Robotics and Autonomy PhD Fellowship, awarded through a collaboration between Microsoft Corporation and MRC.
Prior to resuming doctoral studies at UMD, I was a robotics engineer at Kognitive Robotics, a local robotics engineering startup building turnkey mobile robot platforms for education and research. Before that, I completed a year-long stint as a robotics trainee at Nigeria's foremost robotics and AI research center — Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Nigeria (RAIN). At RAIN, I worked with Dr. Olusola Ayoola on varied projects spanning robot navigation, visual SLAM, and robot control. Before RAIN, in affiliation with the Electrical Engineering Department at my alma mater, I collaborated with Ihechiluru Okoro on research topics at the intersection of robust control, observer-based compensator design, and feedback control of time-delayed dynamical systems.
I earned my undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering (with highest honors) from the University of Nigeria, working under the supervision of Dr. Udoka Nwaneto. My bachelor's thesis focused on model-based controller design for speed regulation in electric drives.
