Our Advisors: Purdue AI Racing Crew
Shreyas Sundaram is the Marie Gordon Professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, and Co-Director of the Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo from 2010 to 2014. His research interests include control of distributed and multi-agent systems, fault-tolerant and secure control, game theory, and network science. Dr. Sundaram is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, and an Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship. At Purdue, he received the Dean H. T. Yang Faculty Excellence Award in Leadership in Service, the HKN Outstanding Professor Award, the Outstanding Mentor of Engineering Graduate Students Award, the Hesselberth Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award.
Dan Williams recently became a full time Purdue Professor of Practice after spending 37 years in industry developing vehicle control systems and more recently autonomous vehicles. In addition to engineering degrees (BS, MS Illinois, Ph.D. Florida Tech), he has an MBA (Florida Tech) and MA (History, Purdue). He has written over 60 papers and 35 patents on vehicle control systems, and recently authored a book on “Generalized Vehicle Dynamics.” Dan is a licensed Professional Engineer, and a fellow of SAE, ASME, and IMechE.
Our Team: Purdue AI Racing Crew
Advisor: Dr. Labi
Subteam: Operations
Degree Program: MS Civil Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2022
Graduation Date: 2025
Background: Experienced in project management and logistics.
Research Interests: Works on operations management for autonomous racing, intelligent transportation systems, etc.
Advisor: Dr. Williams
Subteam: Controls
Degree Program: Phd Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2030
Background: Rutgers graduate with Lockheed Martin experience; specializes in controls, perception, and autonomous systems.
Research Interests: Studies autonomous vehicle safety systems, emphasizing redundancy and fail-safe mechanisms and software architecture engineering.
Advisor: Dr. Sundaram
Subteam: Perception
Degree Program: Phd Electrical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2030
Background: Interested in planning and decision-making under uncertainty.
Research Interests: Researches planning and behavior prediction for safe and efficient racing maneuvers.
Advisor: Dr. Labi
Subteam: Perception
Degree Program: Phd Civil Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2022
Graduation Date: 2027
Background: Specializes in lidar-based mapping and sensor fusion.
Research Interests: Researches lidar perception pipelines for real-time mapping and obstacle detection.
Advisor: Dr. Williams
Subteam: Controls
Degree Program: MS Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2027
Background: Anthony is a MS student from the United States Military Academy focusing on the Vehicle Dynamics and Controls sub-team for Purdue AI Racing.
Research Interests:Interested in developing control algorithms to increase vehicle yaw stability and control while entering and exiting a corner. Currently focused on lateral control of the vehicle.
Background: Manuel Mar is the Senior Operations Manager of the Purdue Autonomous Racing Initiative (PAIR), where he leads a multidisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate researchers advancing high-speed autonomous vehicle systems. He earned his Ph.D. and MS in Engineering Technology from Polytechnic Purdue University, where his dissertation focused on advancing the performance, robustness, and energy efficiency of autonomous and electric vehicles through sensor innovation, powertrain optimization, and data-driven control.
Research Interests: His research interests center on advancing high-speed autonomous vehicle operational performance and explores energy-optimal trajectory planning and powertrain modeling for electric vehicles, leveraging large-scale telemetry datasets, dynamic programming, and real-time optimization tools. Together, your interests aim to bridge high-fidelity research with real-world autonomous racing and intelligent mobility systems.
Advisor: Dr. Sundaram
Subteam: Perception
Degree Program: MS Electrical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2024
Graduation Date: 2026
Background: U.S. Army officer and perception engineer; expertise in LiDAR, ROS, and defense-oriented autonomous systems.
Research Interests: Focused on lidar-based perception for high-speed environment recognition.
Advisor: Dr. Sundaram
Subteam: Planning
Degree Program: MS Electrical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2021
Graduation Date: 2026
Background: Works across planning, controls, perception, and simulation; experienced in localization and telemetry.
Research Interests: Works on planning algorithms integrating safety assurance and mission reliability.
Advisor: Dr. Williams
Subteam: Controls
Degree Program: Phd Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2030
Background: BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of California Riverside. Direct Vehicle Dynamics experience working for the FSAE team at UCR.
Research Interests: Works on longitudinal control for robust braking and acceleration under extreme racing conditions.
Advisor: Dr. Williams
Subteam: Simulation
Degree Program: MS Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2026
Background: Alex Schleizer is a Master's student in the School of Mechanical Engineering. He received his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue in May 2025. He has experience with machine controls, Robot Operating System (ROS), and diesel engines.
Research Interests: His research interests include reinforcement learning, autonomous vehicle control, and simulation.
Advisor: Dr. Sundaram
Subteam: Planning
Degree Program: Phd Electrical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2023
Graduation Date: 2028
Background: Focuses on trajectory planning and race line optimization for autonomous racing.
Research Interests: Researches planning and behavior prediction for autonomous high-speed racing.
Advisor: Dr. Shaver
Subteam: Controls
Degree Program: Phd Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2023
Graduation Date: 2028
Background: Experienced in autonomous systems, vehicle dynamics, and control, with degrees from Wuhan University of Technology and UC Berkeley.
Research Interests: Works on lateral and longitudinal control algorithms to improve path tracking precision and vehicle stability.
Advisor: Dr. Sundaram
Subteam: Simulation
Degree Program: MS Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2025
Graduation Date: 2025
Background: Masters student in Robotics working on cloud and local simulations for Purdue AI Racing.
Research Interests: My research interests includes vehicle autonomy, reinforcement learning, networked robotic systems.
Advisor: Dr. Williams
Subteam: Simulation
Degree Program: Phd Mechanical Engineering
Start Year in Program: 2024
Graduation Date: 2027
Background: Experienced in control systems, dynamic modeling, and autonomous navigation.
Research Interests: Develops high-fidelity simulation environments for autonomous racing validation.
Former Members
Jiqian (Frank) Dong is currently a PhD candidate at Lyles School of Civil Engineering and a graduate research assistant at Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) at Purdue University. He is currently a developer at the perception team for PAIR. His doctoral research investigates information fusion, computer vision and control strategies, for connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) using advanced machine learning techniques including deep learning (DL) and reinforcement learning (RL).
Jelin Sabu is a Graduate Student at Purdue University, pursuing his master's degree in Construction Engineering, and is also working as a graduate research assistant under Dr. Samuel Labi. Jelin has 1 year of industry experience in core construction. He is part of the business operations team since 2024.
Haoguang Yang is a PhD. candidate from School of Engineering Technology. He joined Black & Gold Autonomous Racing in 2021 as a control engineer and became chief systems engineer in late 2022. He has rich expertise in mobile robots, Robot Operating System, dynamics and control, and embedded systems. His research interests involve software-hardware computer-aided co-design and real-time fault mitigation of control systems.