Mabel Zhang
Senior Software Engineer at Anduril Industries
United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMabel Zhang is a Senior Software Engineer with a decade of experience at the intersection of robotics, marine science, and open-source systems, currently contributing to deep-sea AUV software at Anduril. Her PhD in robotics focused on visuotactile perception and active exploration for grasping, and she has transitioned that perception-first mindset into improving underwater simulation, sensors, and state estimation for ROS/Gazebo ecosystems. Over five years at Open Robotics she led marine robotics simulation efforts (including work on VRX and DAVE) and made substantive back-end contributions to flagship ROS2 projects like rosbag2 and robot_localization. She pairs academic rigor—postdoctoral work in marine energy and past JPL collaborations—with practical engineering: adding playback/filtering features, configurable QoS, and ocean wave parameters to production-grade tools. An active community steward and technical writer, she also helps make STEM more inclusive through editorial and reviewer roles. Beyond code, she continues formal and self-directed study in marine science, blending domain knowledge with systems engineering to tackle environmental robotics challenges.
10 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Exchange Student Artificial Intelligence Computer Science, Exchange Student Artificial Intelligence Computer Science at The University of EdinburghUniversity of California, San DiegoSummer visiting student Marine Biology, Summer visiting student Marine Biology at University of WashingtonPhD Computer Science, PhD Computer Science at University of Pennsylvania
English, Chinese, Chinese, French
Github Skills (22)
c-language10
gazebosim10
python10
testing10
rosbag10
rcpp10
cprogramming-language10
ros10
documentation10
gazebo-simulator10
operating-system10
command-line-interface9
qos9
gt9
cmake9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
ros2/rosbag2
Mar 2020 - Aug 2020
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 reviews, 8 commits, 21 PRs in 4 months
Contributions summary:Mabel Zhang primarily contributed to the `rosbag2` project by implementing new features and improving existing functionalities. Her work involved adding a playback rate command-line argument, including a filter for reading selective topics and exposing it to the command line, alongside refactoring and test additions. These contributions demonstrate a focus on enhancing the core functionality of the rosbag2 tool, particularly improving playback and data filtering capabilities.
ros2/ros2_documentation
Oct 2019 - Mar 2021
ROS 2 docs repository
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:4 reviews, 14 commits, 5 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Mabel primarily contributed to the ROS 2 documentation repository by updating and improving the migration guide. Their work involved modifying existing documentation, including code examples, and addressing comments from pull requests. The contributions focused on explaining and clarifying the transition from ROS 1 to ROS 2, particularly in areas like unit testing and package dependencies. These changes enhance the clarity and accuracy of the documentation for developers migrating to ROS 2.
roboticsros-2rosros2
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