Alexandra Nilles
Assistant Professor at Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington, United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolAlexandra Nilles is an assistant professor of Computer Science at Western Washington University and a robotics researcher with 11 years of experience spanning motion planning, embodied interaction, and system-level design. Trained originally in physics and holding a Ph.D. from UIUC under Steven LaValle, her work focuses on robots that physically interact with and reason about their environments, from micro-robotics to persistent environmental monitoring. After a postdoc at Cornell’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab, she combines theoretical motion-planning insights with hands-on hardware and field deployments, including low-cost systems and an NSF-funded startup collaboration. Her lab now explores intersections of mobile robotics, GIS, accessibility, and micro-mobility, aiming for durable, practical robotic solutions for environmental and societal challenges. Notably, she emphasizes minimal, physically grounded sensor models and stigmergic coordination, bringing information-theoretic and complexity-science perspectives to real-world robotic systems.
11 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Lakewood High SchoolBS, Engineering Physics, BS, Engineering Physics at Colorado School of MinesUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Github Skills (36)
robot8
cubing8
meta8
simulator7
simulation7
robotics7
semantics7
robot-simulator7
puzzle7
operating-system5
latex5
scripting4
python4
physics4
shell4
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
tauhid03/MarkovChainAnalysis
Aug 2018 - Mar 2019
Contributions:49 commits, 6 PRs, 35 pushes in 7 months
Jbwasse2/Research-on-Swarm-Robotics
Feb 2017 - Jul 2017
Contributions:23 commits, 23 pushes in 5 months
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