Clinton Enwerem|Academic CV

2239 A. V. Williams Bldg., 8223 Paint Branch Dr, College Park, MD 20742

(+1) 301-405-3374 enwerem@umd.edu clintonenwerem.com

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Research Interests

Robot Learning, Dexterous Robotic Grasping & Manipulation, Multi-Modal Uncertainty Estimation.

Education

  • 2021-Date PhD, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. Advisors: Professor John S. Baras and Professor Calin Belta. Relevant Coursework: Decision-Making for Robotics, Network Control Systems, Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Random Processes, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Nonlinear Control Systems, Optimal Control, System Theory, Convex Optimization, Formal Methods for Control & Dynamical Systems, Multimodal Foundational Models.
  • 2014-2018 B.Eng., Electrical Engineering, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria. Graduated with Highest Honors. Emphasis: Control Theory. Completed coursework in engineering numerical analysis, control systems, electrical machines and drives, computer architecture, electronics, and communication systems.

Selected Publications

Preprints/Articles In Review

  • 2026 Clinton Enwerem, Shreya Kalyanaraman, John S. Baras, and Calin Belta, “Variational Neural Belief Parameterizations for Robust Dexterous Grasping under Multimodal Uncertainty,” arXiv preprint, 2026. Extended preprint with additional experiments, analysis, and discussion. arXiv link
  • 2026 Clinton Enwerem, John S. Baras, and Calin Belta, “Risk-Constrained Belief-Space Optimization for Safe Control under Latent Uncertainty,” arXiv preprint, 2026. arXiv link
  • 2023 Clinton Enwerem, John S. Baras, and Danilo Romero, "Distributed Optimal Formation Control for an Uncertain Multiagent System in the Plane," arXiv:2301.05841 [cs, eess], Jan. 2023.

In Conference Proceedings

  • 2025 Clinton Enwerem, Aniruddh G. Puranic, John S. Baras, and Calin Belta, Safety-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Control via Risk-Sensitive Value Iteration and Quantile Regression. In the proceedings of the 64th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2025.
  • 2024 Clinton Enwerem, Erfaun Noorani, John S. Baras, and Brian M. Sadler, Robust Stochastic Shortest-Path Planning via Risk-Sensitive Incremental Sampling, In the proceedings of the 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2024.
  • 2024 Clinton Enwerem and John S Baras. Safe Collective Control under Noisy Inputs and Competing Constraints via Non-Smooth Barrier Functions. In the 2024 European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 3762–3768. IEEE, 2024.
  • 2023 Clinton Enwerem and John S. Baras, "Consensus-Based Leader-Follower Formation Tracking for Control-Affine Nonlinear Multiagent Systems," in the 9th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT), Rome, Italy: IEEE, Jul. 2023, pp. 1226–1231. doi: 10.1109/CoDIT58514.2023.10284199.

Journal Articles

  • 2024 Clinton Enwerem and John S. Baras, Formation Tracking for a Class of Uncertain Multiagent Systems: A Distributed Kalman Filtering Approach, IEEE Control Systems Letters, Volume 8, 2024.

Research Experience

Institute for Systems Research (ISR), University of Maryland

8/2021-Date Graduate Research Assistant

  • Collaborate with PI, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate researchers to design novel robust grasping and manipulation algorithms for robotic arms equipped with anthropomorphic hands.
  • Implement ROS 2-compliant software in Python and C++ for proposed grasp planning and control methods.
  • Validate algorithms through large-scale simulation using high-fidelity simulators (MuJoCo, Isaac Sim) and RL sandboxes (OpenAI Gym, Safety Gymnasium).
  • Author conference and journal papers, technical reports, and presentations to communicate research results.

Electrical Engineering Department, University of Nigeria, Enugu, Nigeria

9/2018-3/2021 Research Assistant

  • Developed open-source software implementing Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) for robust motor control.
  • Co-authored and published a journal paper reporting experimental and theoretical findings.

8-10/2017 Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Designed a feedback control algorithm for first-order-plus-dead-time processes; implementation and accompanying paper available online.

Professional Experience

Institute for Systems Research, College Park, MD

6-8/2023 Summer Research Assistant

  • Formulated a multi-agent safety-critical control problem as a chance-constrained mathematical program. Supervisor: Professor John S. Baras.
  • Proposed a novel solution based on Boolean-composed control barrier certificates.
  • Wrote software to validate approach, and prepared a research paper to summarize results.

MATRIX Lab, USM at Southern Maryland, California, MD

6-8/2022 Research Intern

  • Conducted system identification experiments to validate a quadrotor model. Supervisor: Dr. Danilo Romero.
  • Developed a Lagrangian-based optimal swarm control algorithm for coordinating 10 Crazyflie quadrotors tasked with formation tracking under localization uncertainty.
  • Wrote ROS-compliant and performant software (Python) implementing the control algorithm, and prepared a research paper and a technical report to summarize research findings.

Kognitive Robotics, Lagos, Nigeria

3/2020-2/2021 Robotics Engineer

  • Engineered the complete power and sensor-actuator interface circuitry for a mobile robot from scratch, using Altium for schematic capture and PCB design.
  • Supported robot hardware and ROS(1)-compliant software realization efforts for the company's MVP.

Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Nigeria (RAIN), Ibadan, Nigeria

3/2020-2/2021 Robotics Trainee

  • Contributed to robotics and IoT projects across hardware and software stacks, encompassing computer-aided design, rapid prototyping, sensor fusion, control firmware development, and product testing.

Teaching Experience

ECE Department, University of Maryland

9/2025-12/2025 Graduate Teaching Assistant

  • ENEE467 — Robotics Project Laboratory (with Prof. Calin Belta).
  • Mentored 50+ undergraduate students in kinematics, 3D perception, motion planning, and control.
  • Built reproducible Docker-based labs and testing pipelines spannig topics in manipulator kinematics, 3D perception, motion planning, robot control, and autonomous manipulation.
  • Led weekly lab sessions and provided technical feedback on documentation and debugging.

2/2025-5/2025 Graduate Teaching Fellow

  • ENEE661 — Nonlinear Control Systems (with Prof. John S. Baras).
  • Led problem-solving sessions and discussions on nonlinear analysis and control, covering phase-plane and bifurcation analysis, and stability concepts including Lyapunov, input-to-state, L2, and L-infinity stability.

Technical Skills

  • Robotics ROS 2, MuJoCo, GraspIt!.
  • RL OpenAI Gym, Safety Gymnasium.
  • Robots/EoATs UR3e/UR5, xArm7, LEAP Hand, RealHand L6, Robotiq Hand-E.
  • Tools git, GitHub, GitLab, Docker.
  • Programming Python, C++, Matlab, Bash.
  • Optimization cvxpy, Gurobi, Mosek, Pyomo.
  • Perception/ML PyTorch, OpenCV, TensorFlow.

Honors & Awards

  • 2024 IEEE CSS Student Travel and Workshop Support: Conference travel award to attend CDC'24.
  • 2022 Microsoft Diversity in Robotics & Autonomy PhD Fellowship (2022-2023), MRC & Microsoft.
  • 2022 ROSCon Diversity Scholarship: Travel grant to attend ROSCon 2022 in Kyoto, Japan.
  • 2021 Finalist, Engineers' League, Pan-African Robotics Competition, Rwanda.
  • 2021 CIT Dean's Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University, Africa Campus, Kigali, Rwanda.
  • 2021 Dean's Fellowship, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States.
  • 2020 Scholar, Stanford Exposure to Research & Graduate Education, Stanford University, CA, USA.
  • 2020 EducationUSA Opportunity Funds Program Scholarship, U.S. Consulate General, Lagos, Nigeria.
  • 2020 Sole Recipient (Nationwide), Door Foundation Leadlight Scholarship, RAIN.
  • 2016-2018 Agbami Science & Technology Scholarship, Chevron: Merit-based undergraduate scholarship.
  • 2015-2018 MTN Foundation Scholarship: Nationwide merit-based undergraduate scholarship.

Professional Training & Development

1/2020-2/2021 Certificate in Robot Development & Automation, RAIN

  • Completed graduate-level coursework and projects in robotics, control theory, ML, and IoT.

Open Courseware

  • Fall 2025 Robot Learning (USC).
  • Summer 2025 Planning & Learning in Robotics (UCSD), Principles of Robot Autonomy I & II (Stanford).
  • Summer 2023 Bayesian Statistics (UCSD, Coursera).
  • Summer 2022 Autonomous Navigation for Flying Robots (TUM, edX).

Professional Service, Outreach, & Mentoring

  • 2023-2026 Peer Reviewer: Heliyon, MED’23, ECC’24, ACC’25, L4DC’25, CDC’25, CDC’26, Elsevier (Robotics and Autonomous Systems).
  • 2021-Date Member, Black in Robotics (BiR): U.S.-based organization promoting Black representation in robotics.
  • 2021-2022 Mentor, EducationUSA & iScholar Initiative: Guided STEM graduates from underrepresented backgrounds to secure fully-funded graduate admissions at Stanford, Purdue, and Penn State.

Miscellany

  • Languages English (Fluent; TOEFL iBT: 110/120), Japanese (Conversational).