STEIN LAB - Team

TEAM

Dr. Adrian Stein

Principal Investigator (Lab Lead)

LSU Faculty Page

or visit: https://icorelab.github.io/

Education

PhD in Mechanical Engineering, University at Buffalo (2024)
MS in Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Berlin (2019)
BS in Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Berlin (2016)

Ph.D. Students

Karan Baker

(Graduate Research Assistant)

Karan's research focuses on precision motion control and uncertainty quantification. He was a National Merit Scholar and completed his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana State University (USA), where he also earned a B.S. in History with a double major in 2024. During his Ph.D. he received the NASA LaSPACE Graduate Student Research Assistanship in 2025 & 2026 and NSF EPSCoR LINK award in 2026. Karan oversees the interview process for undergraduate student applicants and provides recommendations for selection.

✉️ kbake54@lsu.edu

Sean Maki

(Graduate Research Assistant)

Sean specializes in autonomous driving, vibration control, and physics-informed learning. He earned his B.S. in 2025 from the University at Buffalo. During his undergraduate studies, he interned at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he contributed to beamline experiments, and at Aurubis, a metal ore mining company based in Buffalo. Sean received the NASA LaSPACE Graduate Student Research Assistanship in 2025 & 2026.

✉️ smaki1@lsu.edu

Sanjay Maharjan

(Graduate Research Assistant)

Sanjay specializes in developing an autonomous drone with computer vision and prediction to capture rogue UAVs. He earned his B.S. in 2021 from the University of Evansville, Indiana. He works part-time at Bancroft Automated Restaurant Systems Inc. as a Chief Mechanical Engineer.

✉️ smaha12@lsu.edu

Undergraduate Students

Dutch Dunphy

(Senior)

Dutch has been with the lab since Feb. 2025. His research focuses on building a Gantry Crane where is expertise lies in CAD modeling. Dutch received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2025.

Darren Johnson

(Senior)

Darren joined the lab in Fall 2025. His project is the CAD design, hardware integration, and testing of small drones. Darren also leads the project of testing new controllers on UAVs. He also works on Humanoid Robots. Darren received the S & B Engineers and Constructors Scholarship in Spring 2026. He also received the NASA LaSPACE GPS scholarship in 2026. In Fall 2026 & Spring 2027 Darren is funded under LaSPACE REA.

Yousuf Atteia

(Junior)

Yousuf joined the lab in 2024. His research focuses on CAD design, hardware integration, embedded system engineering, and autonomous control of UAVs. Yousuf received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2025. He also received the NASA LaSPACE GPS scholarship in 2026.

Don Nguyen

(Sophomore)

Don became a member of the lab in Spring 26, pursuing research in areas such as self-driving systems, SLAM, and robotic development using ROS. He received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2026

Carter Burdette

(Senior)

Carter joined the lab in 2025. His research focuses on vibration control of soft materials and electronic assembly. Carter received the Supervised Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) award in 2025 from NSF EPSCoR/LaRegents. Carter is an intern in Summer 2025 and 2026 at Gallo Mechanical, LLC.

Neil Muralles

(Senior)

Neil joined the lab in 2025. His current research focuses on designing a liquid metal distribution device. He also works on object identification algorithms using AI. He is responsible for all Blender animations. Neil received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2025. Neil is an intern in Summer 2026 at S&B Engineers and Constructors.

Animesh Bangal

(Junior)

Animesh joined the lab in Fall 25 and his research focuses on controller design for UAVs. He received the LSU Gulf Scholars Award which funds him to conduct autonomous UAV research in our lab in Summer 2026. He also received the Cameron LNG Children of Employees Scholarship for the academic year 2026 - 2027.

Abigail Lawlor

(Senior)

Abigail joined the lab in Fall 2025. She assists the lab by designing AI architectures for object identification and path prediction of drones. Abigail is an intern in Summer 2026 at CITGO.

Tri Nguyen

(Sophomore)

Tri joined the lab in Fall 25 and his focus is on building fixed-wing airplanes and UAV hardware integration.

Danny Galeas

(Sophomore)

Danny joined the lab in Spring 26 and his research focuses on autonomous car algorithms, SLAM, ROS, and CAD Design.

Tariq Hlayel

(Sophomore)

Tariq joined the lab in Fall 25 and his focus is on UAV hardware integration and drone operation.

Peyton Bell

(Sophomore)

Peyton joined the lab in Fall 25 and her research is on biomedical actuator design. She received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2026.

Heepeom Shin

(Sophomore)

Heepeom joined the lab in Fall 25 and his research focuses on AI architectures uncertainty quantification.

Peyton Ardoin

(Sophomore)

Peyton joined the lab in Fall 25. His work deals uncertainty quantification and global sensitivity analysis.

Elliott Lombardo

(Sophomore)

Elliott joined the lab in Fall 25. His focus is on electric wiring, modelling, assembling, and testing a gantry crane structure.

Ericka Dusek

Ericka joined the lab in Fall 25 and her research focuses on CAD Design. She also programs in Arduino for data collection.

Chaz Chenevert

(Sophomore)

Chaz joined the lab in Summer 26, conducting research in areas such as CAD for the gantry crane, self-driving systems, and ROS. He received the NASA LaSPACE Undergraduate Research Assistantship in 2026 and visited NASA Langley in Summer 2026. Chaz received the Supervised Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) award in 2026-2027 from NSF EPSCoR/LaRegents.