Yulun Tian’s Academic Website
I will be joining the Robotics Department at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2025!
To prospective students: I am actively seeking highly motivated and talented PhD students starting in Fall 2025. Click here for more details.
I am passionate about developing scalable and trustworthy autonomy that operates robustly over long periods of time without human intervention. My current research applies tools from nonlinear and distributed optimization, machine learning, and graph theory to develop principled algorithms with theoretical guarantees and real-world systems for spatial perception, navigation, and multi-agent systems.
I am a postdoc at UCSD working with Prof. Nikolay Atanasov. Previously, I was a postdoc at MIT LIDS and AeroAstro. I received my PhD degree from MIT AeroAstro in August 2023, with a focus on autonomous systems. During my PhD, I was very fortunate to be advised by Prof. Jonathan How. Prior to PhD, I received my SM degree (2019) from MIT and BA degree (2017) from UC Berkeley.
Selected News
- [03/2025] I am serving as an Associate Editor for IROS 2025.
- [12/2024] My PhD thesis received the 2024 best dissertation award from the IEEE RAS TC for Multi-Robot Systems. A big thank you to the MRS TC for promoting research and building community in this field!
- [11/2024] I gave a guest lecture on collaborative perception (slides) at MIT 16.485: Visual Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles (VNAV).
- [08/2024] I started my postdoc at UCSD working with Prof. Nikolay Atanasov.
- [06/2024] Very excited to become an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR).
Selected Awards and Honors
- Best Dissertation Award, IEEE RAS TC for Multi-Robot Systems, 2024.
- Outstanding Reviewer, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2023.
- Best Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2022.
- Honorable Mention for Best Paper, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2021.
- Honorable Mention for Best Paper, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020.