Hi, I’m Ben.

Robotics Engineer | University of Pennsylvania, The Cooper Union

I’m a second-year Master’s student in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, with a concentration in Mechatronic and Robotic Systems. I graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from The Cooper Union in 2024, where I also minored in Computer Science.

My research interests center on developing control and motion planning algorihtms with rigorous guarantees for safety, stability, and reliability in uncertain and evolving environments. I’m particularly interested in unifying tools from dynamical systems and optimal control with data-driven modeling, with the goal of enabling robots to adapt online without sacrificing analytical structure or formal guarantees.

At Penn, I conduct research in the Sung Robotics Lab within the GRASP Lab, where I work on motion generation and path planning for the NASA-funded TRUSSES lunar robotics project under the guidance of Dr. Cynthia Sung and Dr. Daniel Koditschek. My work explores structure-preserving formulations for risk-aware planning, including energy-based models that explicitly incorporate velocity sensitivity.

Looking ahead, I’m applying to PhD programs this fall to further my work on safe and efficient autonomy in robotics.

I’m also passionate about music — I play the piano/keyboard from time to time and my record collection is growing at an unexpectedly rapid rate.