CV

Education

M.S. in Computer Engineering. University of Massachusetts, Lowell. 2024. 4.0 GPA
B.S. in Electrical Engineering. University of Massachusetts, Lowell. 2023. 3.95 GPA

Work experience

Member of Technical Staff 2
- April 2025 - August 2025
- Draper
- Responsible for the design, implementation, and documentation of code on a micro controller.
- Performed check-out and bring-up of a system alongside a senior engineer, including debugging of any issues.
- Developed Python code for post-processing of test data.
- Chose to leave to pursure a career in robotics.
Research Assistant
- September 2020 - August 2024
- Persistent Autonomy and Robot Learning (PeARL) Lab at University of Massachusetts, Lowell
- Designed, developed, and implemented a framework for underwater inspection with a robot within simulation.
- Developed a predictive framework utilizing a Intel Realsense camera, attached to the wrist of a Kinova Robotics Jaco 2, mounted on a Ghost Robotics Vision 60. This allows the system to predict and react to environment motion for better target tracking during and after execution of motions within a dynamic environment.
- Developed test methods and evaluation frameworks for the categorization and measurement of the autonomy of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, from both a non-contextual and contextual standpoint.
- Gained experience with multiple different different robots including a Fetch Robotics Mobile Manipulator, Kinova Robotics Jaco 2, Ghost Robotics Vision 60, Universal Robots UR5e, and Boston Dynamics Spot.
Grader
- January 2023 - May 2023
- University of Massachusetts, Lowell
- Provided students in the lab with feedback and guidance during COMP.4500 Mobile Robotics I.
- Graded the performance of Student’s robots in each of 5 lab projects during the semester.
- Worked with the Professor to effectively teach students the material.
- Helped teach debugging and testing principles when student’s code or robots had issues.

Skills

Programming Languages
- Python
- C / C++
- VHDL
- MATLAB
- Java
Robotics
- Computer Vision
- Manipulation
- Path Planning
- Localization
- Reinforcement Learning
- ROS / ROS2
Tools
- Oscilloscopes
- Logic Analyzers
- Function Generators

Publications

An Adaptive Framework for Manipulator Skill Reproduction in Dynamic Environments

Ryan Donald, Brendan Hertel, Stephen Misenti, G Yan, Reza Azadeh. (2024). "An Adaptive Framework for Manipulator Skill Reproduction in Dynamic Environments" 2024 21st International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR).

Contextual Autonomy Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Subterranean Environments

Ryan Donald, Peter Gavriel, Adam Norton, S Reza Ahmadzadeh. (2023). "Contextual Autonomy Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Subterranean Environments" 2023 9th International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA).

Methods for combining and representing non-contextual autonomy scores for unmanned aerial systems

Brendan Hertel, Ryan Donald, Christian Dumas, S Reza Ahmadzadeh (2022). "Methods for combining and representing non-contextual autonomy scores for unmanned aerial systems" 2022 8th International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA).