Farhad Nawaz is a Ph.D. graduate from the department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab, co-advised by Dr. Nikolai Matni and Dr. Nadia Figueroa. He is broadly interested in combining modern learning techniques with modular, traditional control methods for robotics and autonomous systems. His doctoral research focused on developing hierarchical planning algorithms that enable safe and stable robot manipulation and navigation in human-centered environments. He earned his Master’s degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and holds a Bachelor’s (Hons.) degree in Instrumentation and Control Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India.