Shumon Koga
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Biography: I am an Associate Professor (Tenured PI) in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering at Kobe University, Japan.
Previously, I was a Staff Engineer at Honda R&D from 2023 July to 2025 February, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California San Diego under the supervision of Dr. Nikolay Atanasov from 2020 July to 2023 June.
I received the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego in 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Miroslav Krstic.
My research vision focuses on theoretical foundations and real-world implementations in robot autonomy and complex physical systems by means of control theory, optimization, and machine learning. Specific topics of my research in robotics include active perception, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), safe navigation, and distributed intelligence. My research on complex physical systems is driven by control of PDE models, extremum seeking, and their applications to energy management, advanced manufacturing, climate dynamics, transportation, neuroscience. Lab Website: https://cinapslab.com/ koga@harbor.kobe-u.ac.jp |
News
(Jan. 2026) A paper was accepted to L4DC 2026, "MATT-Diff: Multimodal Active Target Tracking by Diffusion Policy" [Code].
(Jan. 2026) A paper was accepted to ACC 2026, "Safe Trajectory Tracking of the Stefan Problem with Second-Order Moving Boundary Dynamics".
(Dec. 2025) Awarded JST Grant for Next-Generation Edge AI and Robot Foundation Models!
(Oct. 2025) My research was featured in a spotlight article by the IEEE RAS TC on Robot Control! [Article].
(July 2025) A paper was accepted to CDC 2025, "Safe Stabilization of the Stefan Problem with a High-Order Moving Boundary Dynamics by PDE Backstepping" [Code].
(May 2025) Successfully held the ICRA 2025 Workshop "Robot Safety under Uncertainty from “Intangible” Specifications"!! Huge thanks to all the participants and speakers!
(Apr. 2025) Launched the CINAPS Lab!! Please check the website for details on our research focus and opportunities!
(Mar. 2025) Started a new role as an Associate Professor (Tenured PI) in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering at Kobe University, Japan!
(Feb. 2025) Gave an invited talk in the Department of System Design Engineering at Keio University, hosted by Dr. Toru Namerikawa [Blog].
(Jan. 2025) Two papers were accepted to ICRA 2025, "Control Strategies for Pursuit-Evasion Under Occlusion Using Visibility and Safety Barrier Functions" [Webpage] [Code], and "Lyapunov-Certified Trajectory Tracking for Mobile Robot with a Tail Wheel: Differential-Flatness and Adaptive Backstepping Design".
(Dec. 2024) The workshop "Robot Safety under Uncertainty from “Intangible” Specifications", which I co-organized with Pio Ong, Vikas Dhiman, Yiwei Lyu, Nikolay Atanasov, and Dimitra Panagou, was accepted to ICRA 2025!!
(Dec. 2024) Gave an invited talk at the CDC 2024 Workshop "Control and Adaptation: Imagine What’s Next".
(Aug. 2024) Gave a faculty candidate talk at Kobe University (System Informatics Department).
(July 2024) Gave two presentations at ACC 2024, "Sampled-Data Output Feedback Control of the Stefan Problem with Explicit Condition of Sampling Scheduling" and "Event-Triggered Control of Neuron Growth with Actuation at Soma".
(Mar. 2024) Gave a faculty candidate talk at the University of Michigan (NAME Department).
(Oct. 2023) Presented a poster about our work "Hide and Seek with Visibility Constraints using Control Barrier Functions" at the IROS 2023 Workshop on Integrated Perception, Planning, and Control for Physically and Contextually-Aware Robot Autonomy.
(July 2023) Started a new role as Staff Engineer at Honda Research and Development in Tokyo, Japan! Excited to work on cooperative intelligence for automated driving.
(June 2023) Gave an oral presentation (top 16 papers from 115 accepted papers) at L4DC 2023, "Policy Learning for Active Target Tracking over Continuous SE(3) Trajectories".
(May 2023) Gave a presentation at ICRA 2023, "Learning Continuous Control Policies for Information-Theoretic Active Perception".
(Mar. 2023) Gave a faculty candidate talk at NYU/ECE and UC Merced/CS.
(Mar. 2023) Our paper, "Safe PDE Backstepping QP Control With High Relative Degree CBFs: Stefan Model With Actuator Dynamics", was published in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
(Jan. 2023) Two papers were accepted to ACC 2023: "Control Synthesis for Stability and Safety by Differential Complementarity Problem" (together with L-CSS) and "Event-Triggered Safe Stabilizing Boundary Control for the Stefan PDE System with Actuator Dynamics".
(Dec. 2022) Gave an invited talk at "REALM" in MIT/Aero, hosted by Dr. Chuchu Fan.
(July 2022) A paper was accepted to IROS 2022, "Active Mapping via Gradient Ascent Optimization of Shannon Mutual Information over Continuous SE(3) Trajectories".
(May 2022) Attended ICRA and ACC 2022 in person and presented papers for the first time after two years!
(Feb. 2022) Our paper "State Estimation of the Stefan PDE: A Tutorial on Design and Applications to Polar Ice and Batteries" was published in Annual Reviews in Control.
(Feb. 2022) Three papers were accepted to ACC 2022, focusing on "active SLAM", "safe control of PDE by CBF-QP", and "neuron growth control".
(June 2021) Gave a talk at the "DPS Online Seminar". [Slides]
(June 2021) The ICRA'21 workshop "Safe Robot Control with Learned Motion and Environment Models" that I co-organized was successfully held!
(Mar. 2021) Our paper "Towards Implementation of PDE Control for Stefan System: Input-to-State Stability and Sampled-Data Design" was published in Automatica.
(Dec. 2020) My book, coauthored with Prof. Krstic, "Materials Phase Change PDE Control and Estimation: From Additive Manufacturing to Polar Ice", was published by Birkhäuser.
Education
Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, 2020, Advisor: Prof. Miroslav Krstic
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, 2016
B.S. in Applied Physics, Keio University, 2014
Professinal Appointments
Staff Engineer, Honda Research and Development, Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 2023/7-
Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California San Diego, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, La Jolla, CA, 2020/7-2023/6
Research Intern, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA, 2018/6-2018/9
Visiting Appointments
Visiting Student Research Program, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, 2017/10-2017/11
Visiting Research Scholar, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY, 2017/6-2017/7
Awards
Robert E. Skelton Systems and Control Dissertation Award, UCSD Center for Control Systems and Dynamics, 2020
O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, American Automatic Control Council, 2019
(Photo from conference reports in IEEE Control Systems Magazine.)Outstanding Graduate Student Award, UCSD/MAE, 2018