Admins

Mike Salem (@mike.salem)

Mike is the Service Lead and Community Owner for Udacity's Robotics Nanodegree Program. Prior to joining Udacity, Mike has worked in several different fields and positions including Quantitative Researcher, Scientific Developer, Software Engineer and Adjunct Professor. Mike's robotics experience includes working as a software engineer on Ground Control Stations for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) where he helped build prototypes using commercial off-the-shelf products and writing software to interface with these products and vehicle payloads. He is also has experience with Computer Vision, Computational Perception, and Probabilistic Robotics. His current interests include Swarm Robotics and Self-Organizing Systems, Modular Robotics and Soft Robotics.

Gina Longo (@gina.longo)

Gina is the Student Support Coordinator for the Robotics Nanodegree program. She’s been supporting Udacity’s students since February of 2016 and is passionate about building strong student communities. While she doesn’t have any direct experience in robotics (yet), she’s very interested in the use of robotics in architecture and art.

Gina has a degree in Wine and Viticulture, with an emphasis on Enology. Outside of work, she enjoys doing Argentine tango and blues dancing, drinking tea, and caring for her many indoor plants.

Erika Alonzo (@erika.alonzo)

Erika is a Student Experience Coordinator for the Robotics Nanodegree and Self Driving Car Nanodegree. She began her journey with Udacity, August of 2017 and is excited to learn more about robotics through the eyes of the students.

Erika has a degree in Behavioral Sciences from San Jose State University. In her free time, she enjoys creating content for her beauty blog, indoor rock climbing, and discovering the latest food trends.

An Nguyen (@annnn)

An is a Mechanical Engineer with years of CAD design experience in developing new products for trucking's trailer industry. Prior to that, she worked on a biomedical device research team during her senior year in college. An cannot settle with free time in her pocket! She uses it to learn Python and C++ from Udacity's courses and currently a student & mentor in Udacity's Self-Driving Car Nanodegree. An also spent a few months with general practices on MATLAB in some Robotics topics such as Aerial, Mobility, Path Planning, and Perception through Robotics Specialization on Coursera.s

Shreeyak Sajjin (@shreeyak)

Shreeyak is a passionate guy who has dreamed of robots since childhood. As a child, he drew his inspiration from cartoons like the Transformers and Swat Katz and was always full of questions. As an grown-up child, he works at Sirena Technologies as an (Embedded Systems) Software Engineer and still asks too many questions.

He loves to read epic fantasy and science fiction and is ever ready to recommend his favorite authors to anyone looking for a book to read. Currently his favorites include Isaac Asimov, Brent Weeks, Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson.

Shreeyak is constantly working on side projects including a quadcopter build (that's always being upgraded), intelligent sensors and motor drives.

Rajat Mishra (@rajat)

Rajat is currently a PhD candidate, developing control and mission planning algorithms for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and also experimenting the application of soft bodied robots. He was also one of the developers of Humanoid iZac, which got national acclaim in India for its flexible motions. Additionally, he has worked on projects which required skills like Artificial Intelligence, Embedded Systems and Image Processing. Prior to becoming a PhD candidate, he was briefly working as an R&D consultant for developing medical devices, funded by NIH.

In his free time, he likes to read tech blogs and play Badminton. Last but not the least, he is a big Star Wars fan (Do or Do not. There is no try) and loves to watch Cricket.

Kyle Stewart-Frantz (@kylesf)

Kyle is proof that not having a relevant educational background should not stop you from what you truly want to do. Graduating in August 2016 with a double major of Bachelors of Chemical Engineering and Bachelors of Science, he decided that he wanted get involved with Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics with no background. This came from the realization of taking Udacity’s Intro to Machine Learning course in January 2016 and becoming fascinated by the amazing things computers were able to do.

From there he began spending countless hours on courses online, books and papers to learn as much as he could. He entered the SDCND program in the November 2016 and within weeks found himself in the front of the program and moving to an earlier cohort. He now reviews and facilitates a better student experience for the course. Anything you need feel free to ping him on slack and he will be happy to help! He wants you to know that no matter where you come from, your background, and your goals that anything is achievable with hard work and perseverance!

His current side projects are a Linux based follow me drone, a neural network digit classifier FPGA chip and recently completed picture frame.

Adam Malpass (@tokyo_adam)

Adam Malpass is originally from the UK but has been living in Tokyo for several years. He is designing integrated circuits at a semiconductor company for major smartphones, tablets, and other electronics.

Adam's passion for robotics has existed for as long as he can remember which actually inspired his move to Japn. Adam built his first robot over 15 years ago; a solar-powered racing robot that competed in the BBC's 'Techno Games' TV show. Recently, Adam also built a 3D printer and hopes to combine his knowledge of hardware and software to build interesting robots both on his own and with the community!

Adam has a Masters degree in Electronic Engineering and is always open to new opportunities. He graduated top of his class for electrical engineering, has a patent and a publication in IEEE, and was named UK Young Electronic Engineer of the Year in 2013. If you have any interesting opportunities for Adam, he can be reached at @tokyo_adam on Slack or via his LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammalpass/)

Sahil Juneja (@sjuneja)

Sahil graduated from North Carolina State University with a M.S. in Electrical Engineering. He has a diverse background when it comes to robotics - with research work in biomechanical gait analysis and robot imitation learning, to developing autonomous capabilities for mobile robots, manipulators, and drones. His most recent experience was at a drone startup working on swarm systems and drones with 360 imaging and video capabilities.

A lifelong learner, he started his journey with Udacity with the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree's first cohort and then later with the Deep Learning Nanodegree, and since then he has become a mentor, a reviewer, and now a content developer for the Robotics Nanodegree!

You can usually find him either on one of the Udacity related Slacks, ready to help students out with any questions they have, or on Quora sharing his love for Harry Potter!

Tomas (@fluke777)

Tomas was born in the heart of Europe but maybe thanks to his passion for everything math, data and computers he ended up in California. He always had a passion for learning and teaching and is loitering on Udacity since its inception. He holds master degree in radio electronics.

He has experience in many programming languages, moving terabytes of data around, architecting large distributed systems and machine learning.

In his free time he likes to buy (and sometimes read) technical books watch good movies and long walks on the beach. He no longer reads sci-fi about robots since he thinks now it is time to do it for real.

Always feel free to reach out with questions or to just discuss on slack @fluke777 or LinkedIn.