Dr. Raghvendra Cowlagi has accepted an offer to join the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) as an Assistant Professor starting August 2013.

Raghvendra joined the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech in the fall of 2006 under the supervision of Professor Panagiotis Tsiotras. Prior to that, Raghvendra obtained his B.E. in Electronics Eng. from the University of Mumbai in 2003 and his M. Tech. degree in Aerospace Eng. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, in 2005.

After graduating from Georgia Tech, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. Since April 2012 he has been a member of the technical staff of the Guidance, Navigation and Controls branch at Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., in Cambridge, MA.

Raghvendra's doctoral dissertaion was related to motion planning and control algorithms for autonomous aerial and terrestrial vehicles; specifically, he addressed issues related to the feasibility between the geometric and kinematic layers of hierarchical algorithms for motion planning problems.  His current research interests include modeling and control of vehicle dynamics, path and motion planning, optimal control, as well as applications of control theory to accident analysis and system safety. 

His research has resulted in numerous publications in prestigious technical journals and conference proceedings.  His work has been recognized by two major awards: the Best Student Paper Award at the 2009 American Control Conference, and the 2005 Aeronautical Society of India Award for Outstanding Performance in the IIT Master's degree program.