CV

Education

• BTech in Mechanical Engineering, NMIMS, Mumbai, India
• MSc in Applied Mathematics, Northeastern University, Boston, USA
• Ph.D. in Robotics, IHMC / University of West Florida (in progress)
  • Dissertation: Physics-Embedded Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Contact Balance in Humanoid Robots

Work Experience

• PhD Researcher — IHMC / University of West Florida (Pensacola, FL)
  • Physics-embedded reinforcement learning for humanoid robot balance and recovery
  • Asymmetric actor-critic with privileged balance signals (capture point, CoM, centroidal momentum)
  • 93.4% fall recovery rate across all configurations; emergent multi-contact strategies
• Machine Learning Engineer — DEKA Research and Development Corp. (Manchester, NH)
  • Autonomous Delivery Robot: deep learning sensor fusion for global occupancy grids (lidar, radar, cameras)
  • Insulin Pump Enhancement: Reinforcement Learning and Transformer methods for adaptive insulin delivery
  • Infusion Pump Analysis: vision-based liquid flow rate estimation
• Machine Learning and Statistics Research Assistant — Nano-medicine Center, Northeastern University
  • Automated MRI classification for Alzheimer’s disease (83% accuracy)
  • Segmentation models for extracting gray matter characteristics from MR images
• Teaching Assistant and Grader — Northeastern University
  • Mathematical methods, mathematical modeling, and calculus

Skills

• Programming: Python, C++, MATLAB
• ML/DL: PyTorch, CUDA, Scikit-Learn
• Robotics: ROS, MuJoCo, reinforcement learning, sim-to-real transfer
• Tools: Pandas, NumPy, OpenCV, Linux

Publications

Anticipatory and Adaptive Footstep Streaming for Teleoperated Bipedal Robots

Penco, L., Park, B., Fasano, S., Poddar, N., McCrory, S., Kitchel, N., Bialek, T., Anderson, D., Calvert, D., & Griffin, R. (2025). Anticipatory and Adaptive Footstep Streaming for Teleoperated Bipedal Robots. IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2025.

Accelerating Classical Path Planning via Learned Search Space Reduction

Poddar, N., Mishra, B., Clark, G., Sevil, H. E., & Griffin, R. (2026). Accelerating Classical Path Planning via Learned Search Space Reduction. AIAA SCITECH 2026 Forum. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2026-1997

Embedding Classical Balance Control Principles in Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Recovery

Poddar, N. (2026). Embedding Classical Balance Control Principles in Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Recovery. IROS 2026.

Balance as Infrastructure: Environmental Contact Awareness for Loco-Manipulation Recovery in Humanoid Robots

Talks

Automated Tetrahedron Meshing
Overcoming Numerical Challenges in Volumetric Data Processing

Sinkhorn Balancing in Sudoku: A Probabilistic Approach to Constraint Satisfaction

Analyzing the Relationship Between Crime Count, Weather Conditions, and Weekend Outings: Can They Serve as Valid Excuses for Cancellations?

YOLO v3 Object Detection Implementation and Evaluation in PyTorch

Markov Chain Modeling of Wind Speed Time Series: Analysis, Simulation, and Limitations

Modified SIR Modeling on the Spread of Ideas

Data-Driven Prediction of Aircraft Engine Remaining Useful Life for Enhanced Aviation Safety

Patterns in Capsets

Teaching

Teaching experience 1

Teaching experience 2