Education

08/06 – 08/11 William Marsh Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Doctor of Philosophy program in Computer Science, degree awarded in December 2011. Thesis: Task and Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulators.
Part of the Physical and Biological Computing Group (research in robot motion planning, mobile manipulation). Master of Science degree in Computer Science, November 2008. Thesis: Kinodynamic Motion Planning for High-dimensional Physical Systems.
09/03 – 05/06 Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
Bachelor of Science program in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, awarded degree in June 2006. Thesis: A Search Engine for Mathematical Formulae.
08/05 – 12/05 William Marsh Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Exchange student for one semester, studied Computer Science.
09/99 – 06/03 Moise Nicoara National College, Arad, Romania
Concentrated on Mathematics, Sciences and English.

Work Experience

12/16 – present Software Engineer, Waymo, Mountain View, California, USA
11/13 – 12/16 Software Engineer, Google [x], Mountain View, California, USA
10/11 – 08/13 Research Scientist, Willow Garage, Menlo Park, California, USA
Research and Development in motion planning and manipulation, developed MoveIt!, continued work on OMPL.
06/09 – 08/09 Research Intern, Willow Garage, Menlo Park, California, USA
Developed motion planning software for the PR2 (Personal Robots Program), in particular focusing on manipulation.
06/08 – 09/08 Research Intern, Willow Garage, Menlo Park, California, USA
Developed motion planning software for the PR2 (Personal Robots Program). Started OMPL.
06/06 – 08/06 Software Developer intern, Design Science, Long Beach, California, USA
Converted LaTeX documents into XHTML + Presentation MathML, using LaTeXML.The goal was to produce input data for a search engine.
06/05 – 07/05 Guest Researcher at National Institute of Standards and Technology, Washington DC, USA
Worked on Digital Library of Mathematical Functions Project; required Perl programming, working with LaTeX, XML.
09/03 – 05/05 Teaching Assistant for Computer Science, Jacobs University, Germany
Tutored, graded homeworks and exams for General Computer Science course.
02/02 – 08/03 SC Security Prod SRL, Arad, Romania
 Developed the software for a home security monitoring system based on GSM.

Honors, Awards

IEEE RAS Early Career Award

Awarded in 2016, for contributions to open source software for robot motion planning.

Open Source Software World Challenge Grand Prize

At the 2012 edition of the competition, with the OMPL project.

Best Poster Design Award

Corporate Affiliates Meeting, Rice University, 2009.

Best Technical Contribution Award

Corporate Affiliates Meeting, Rice University, 2008.

Graduate Fellowship

PhD studies in Computer Science, Rice University, 2006.

International Computer Science contests

Member of president's list

During undergraduate studies (2003 - 2006).

Prizes at national contests (in Romania)

Computer Science and Mathematics (2000 - 2003).

Soft skills

Computer Skills:

Languages: