I'm a recent graduate of MIT, where I did my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science ('25). I'm currently on leave from the M. Eng program. I worked with Zhutian Yang, Leslie Kaelbling, Tomas Lozano-Perez, Ge Yang, and Phillip Isola at CSAIL on hierarchical long-horizon manipulation and learning from virtual demonstrations. I'm interested in a wide variety of robot learning: long-horizon mobile manipulation, synthetic data, theory, etc. I'm currently applying for PhDs in robotics. In my free time, I enjoy playing tennis, lifting, and sailing.

Research

Lucid-XR
Lucid-XR: An Extended-Reality Data Engine for Robotic Manipulation
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2025
We build an intuitive VR data collection interface in simulation for imitation learning, producing visual policies from synthetic data that generalize to real-world scenes and amplify data collection capacity 20x.
PoPi
PoPi: Combining Planning and Diffusion for Mobility with Unknown Dynamics
arXiv preprint
Planner-Ordered Policy (PoPi) is an approach for long-horizon robot manipulation problems in which the dynamics are partially unknown, for example, pushing and pulling a 5-wheeled office chair.
LucidSim
LucidSim: Learning Visual Parkour from Generated Images
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), 2024
We use generative models as a realistic and diverse data source by augmenting classical physics simulators. We demonstrate that robots trained this way can accomplish highly dynamic tasks like parkour without requiring depth.
NASA Wildfire
Real-Time Wildfire Localization on the NASA AMS using Deep Learning
Yajvan Ravan, Aref Malek, Chester Dolph, Nikhil Behari
AIAA SciTech 2026
Real-time wildfire detection using multi-spectral NASA imagery. Deep learning model achieves 94.68% accuracy and 84.96% IoU for automated localization through clouds and at night.

Small Projects

BeaverNav
BeaverNav
Indoor navigation system for MIT's campus enabling users to navigate between rooms with routes from start to end destination. Built using computer vision, graph algorithms, and A* path planning.
BatterBot
BatterBot
Robotic system for playing baseball using trajectory optimization, inverse kinematics, and kinematic trajectory optimization. Demonstrates nonprehensile manipulation for dynamic aerial objects.
Neural Network Pruning
Neural Network Pruning with Matrix Methods
Reducing redundant parameters in neural networks using linear algebra techniques including PCA, low-rank approximation, and randomized methods to improve inference time and computational efficiency.
MIT Script
Project description coming soon.
PGIF with Mamba & S3
Project description coming soon.

Resume

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
M.Eng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
(on-leave)
B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Sep 2021 - Jun 2025
GPA: 5.0/5.0
View Coursework
Computer Architecture
Reinforcement Learning
Controls
Algorithms
Computer Vision
Reasoning/Inference in AI
Statistical Inference
Machine Learning
Robotic Manipulation

Experience

MIT CS & AI Lab (Robotics Research)
Aug 2023 - Present
NASA
Jun 2023 - Dec 2023
Computer Vision Research Intern
MIT Media Lab
Oct 2022 - May 2023
• Worked on wearable eye-tracking sensors using micro piezoelectrics with CC2460 microcontroller

Awards

Gold Medal at International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) (2019)
USA Math Olympiad 2-time Qualifier (2020-2021)