People

Zahra Nili

Zahra Nili

Director
Dr. Zahra Nili is an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering Department and director of Dynamic Systems and Intelligent Machines Lab at San Diego State University (SDSU). Dr. Nili holds a B.S. from University of Tehran, an M.S. from Tarbiat Modares University, and a Ph.D. from University of Quebec (École de Technologie Supérieure). Dr. Nili’s current research interests include acoustic perception, deep learning & sequence modeling, cooperative robotics, swarm optimization, motion planning, robot learning, autonomy, and nonlinear dynamical systems.

PhD

Gokay Balci
Gokay Balci
PhD student 2025-present
Qixu Wang
Qixu Wang
PhD student (2022-present)
Patrick McNamee
Patrick McNamee
PhD student (2021-present)

MSc

Matthew Buck
Matthew Buck
MSc student 2025-present
Zaid Yasin
Zaid Yasin
MSc student (2025-present)
Alexander Liske
Alexander Liske
MSc student 2025-present
Luke Waltermire
Luke Waltermire
MSc student 2024-present

BSc

Chris Zueck
Chris Zueck
BSc student 2025-present
Charlie Chavez Meelboom
Charlie Chavez Meelboom
BSc 2025-present

Alumni

Balaji Chandrasekaran
PhD, co-advised Currently at Boeing
Nick Calkins
MSc student
Dylan James-Kavanaugh
MSc
Abelardo Garcia
MSc student
Brendan Healy
MSc student Currently at Goddard
Miles Kiefer
MSc
John Cuellar
MSc Currently at Solar Turbines
Uyiosa Amadasun
MSc student Currently at James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence
Suveen Emmanuel
MSc Currently at Micronics
Karan Sridharan
MSc student, Wichita State University (2018-2020)
Sarah Eck
MSc Currently at Textron Aviation
Max Dommers
BSc Currently at Quartus Engineering
Jared Meek
BSc student
Tran Ly
BSc Currently at Biosero
Jeremiah Pineda
BSc student Currently at Solar Turbines
Derek Chang
BSc student
Archer Hovey
BSc Currently at Northrop Grumman
Kaitlyn Sabala
BSc Currently at Spirit AeroSystems
Thomas Nguyen
BSc student, Wichita State University