Meet the Team Leaders:
David Mulla is the Larson Chair and Professor for Soil & Water Resources in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate at the University of Minnesota, Chair for the Board of Directors at the Precision Agriculture Center, and a member of the Executive Committees at the University of Minnesota for the Water Resources Science graduate program and the National Institute for Artificial Intelligence on Climate Land Interactions for Mitigation, Adaptation, Tradeoffs and Economy (AI-CLIMATE). Dr. Mulla received a Ph.D. degree in Agronomy from Purdue University with an emphasis in soil physics. Dr. Mulla's research focuses on precision conservation, water quality, ecosystem services, and the application of AI/ML and geospatial modeling in agriculture.
Brian McNeill is a 4-H STEM and Agri Science Director. He has dedicated over 30 years to the University of Minnesota Extension, concentrating on advancing 4-H STEM opportunities, including programs like 4-H Robotics, 4-H Aquatic Robotics, the 4-H Engineer Design Challenge, and most recently, guiding the 4-H Plant Science initiative. His role on this project has been to review curriculum pieces and be a part of the planning team of this project.
Kris Simonson is the FIRST Tech Challenge Program Coordinator for High Tech Kids, which involves organizing robotics tournaments around Minnesota for students in grades 6-12. Kris has a BA in geology from Carleton College and teacher training in earth science and middle school science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Before her work with High Tech Kids, she taught math, science, and STEM classes in grades K-7. She is also an avid outdoorswoman with experience paddling numerous wilderness and urban waterways throughout the United States.
Junaed Sattar joined the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in 2016 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2022. He is also the founding director of the Minnesota Interactive Robotics and Vision Laboratory and a current member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Before coming to the University, Sattar served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia from 2012-14 and as an assistant professor at Clarkson University from 2014-15. His primary research focus is on enabling robots to work safely and intuitively alongside people, allowing humans and robots to coexist and collaborate. This involves improving a robot's perception of people, their intentions, and actions, as well as engaging in dialogue and understanding the environment. Previous studies have been significantly influenced by facilitating robots' interactions with humans in unstructured environments, particularly underwater, while current efforts focus on field robots operating in the air, water, and across all-terrain outdoor platforms.
Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos has resided at the University of Minnesota since 1992. Now, the McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and IEEE Fellow. He is the director of the Minnesota Robotics Institute. Amassing over 80 journal and 300 conference publications, Papanikolopoulos specializes in robotics, computer vision, intelligent transportation systems, sensor networks, sensor-based control in transportation applications, inspection, computer engineering, and computer-integrated manufacturing.
Travis Henserson is a research scientist. Travis has been involved in various projects. Examples include designing control schemes for uncrewed aircraft that change shape in flight, automating robotic manipulators to aid in delivering medical treatments, and designing underwater robotic systems to educate youth about water quality.
Rishi Mukherjee is a Master’s in Computer Science student at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Human Robot Interaction (HRI), focusing on Computer Vision applications and semantic analysis. During his undergraduate studies, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Interactive Robotics and Vision Laboratory (IRVLab). Some of his work includes developing software for the MeCO Robot by creating a hand gesture-based interactive menu system. He has also worked on marine object detection and segmentation to facilitate marine debris retrieval. Currently, he is the roboticist in the LCCMR project, tasked with designing and building the ROV and its sensing pod.