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, John S. Baras, and Calin Belta, “Risk-Constrained Belief-Space Optimization for Safe Control under Latent Uncertainty,” arXiv preprint, 2026. arXiv link

• 2026 Clinton Enwerem et al. To be announced, Submitted March 2026.

• 2026 Clinton Enwerem et al. To be announced, Submitted February 2026.

• 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).