Hello, and welcome to my homepage! My name is Danish Rahman, and I have recently completed my Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Robotics and Control Systems at Columbia University with expected graduation in December 2023. My research interests include autonomous robotics such as self-driving ground and aerial vehicles, rehabilitation and medical robotics and the hardware-software intersection within these domains. Above all, I am keenly interested in how human beings and the surrounding environment continue to interact with these robotic systems.

I completed my Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering in 2018 from Texas A&M University. Upon my graduation, I spent four years as a System and Mechanical Engineer working on R&D in offroad and electrified autonomous vehicles. This experience fostered my growing passion for autonomous systems, while my time as a System Engineer facilitated my transition towards a higher-level design and architecture-oriented approach.

Current Research Projects

During my Master’s at Columbia University, I have worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Robotics and Rehabilitation Lab (ROAR). At the ROAR Lab, I am working on the Mobile Tethered Pelvis Assist Device (mTPAD), a mobile gait training robotic system, which uses perturbation-based training to augment motion stability in elderly people and patients of degenerative illnesses, such as Parkinson’s and cerebellar ataxia.

Additionally, I have worked as part of the DiTect Lab under the supervision of Professor Sharon Di, focusing on the development of advanced motion planning algorithms to model and predict the movement of pedestrians and wheelchair users in a GPS-denied environment within New York’s subway stations.