ABOUT ME 

I am now a fourth year PhD student at the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University. I have been working as a research assistant at Embodied Intelligence Lab, under Prof. John Weng.  My research interests are in the areas of brain modeling, computer vision, mobile robotics and machine learning. Specifically, I am interested in the statistical learning and biologically motivated models of cognition, learning, and development, and their application to vision problems. 

My current research project is supported by the Toyota Technical Center. The goal is to model the visual dorsal and ventral pathways using what is called the Where-What Network. We are trying to model feature-based bottom-up attention, location-based top-down attention, and object-based top-down attention using a cortex inspired neuromorphic learning network. Before that, I was responsible a project whose goal is to develop a theory, algorithms and experimental evaluation of active vehicle safety systems, with support from GM. From 2004 to 2005, I worked with other lab members for outdoor navigation by autonomous driving vehicles, as a part of the Team AVS and Team Crossland in the DARPA Grand Challenge, 2005.

We have built two humanoid robots, SAIL and DAV in the lab as platforms for our research on developmental learning, emphasizing acquisition of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills through real-time online interactions with the physical real world. I am responsible for the hardware maintenance, software development and experiment design for the robot DAV. For more detail about the robot's work, please go to the lab page.