Ron Alford
Autonomous Systems Engineer at MITRE
Vienna, Virginia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRon Alford is an Autonomous Systems Engineer and A.I. researcher with 19 years of experience developing planning algorithms and resilient autonomous behaviors, currently at MITRE. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland and has authored over 20 peer-reviewed papers on automated planning while serving on NASA and NSF grant panels and major AI program committees. Ron’s work spans research and engineering—from improving ROSPlan task-planning backend components and waypoint management to building algorithms for autonomous cyber operations and response. His background includes postdoctoral research at the Naval Research Laboratory and early contributions to semantic web reasoning and SWRL integration for Pellet. Known for combining rigorous academic research with practical system-level improvements, he brings both deep theoretical insight and hands-on reliability fixes to complex robotic and cyber-autonomy stacks. Based in Vienna, Virginia, he pairs long-term research impact with active open-source contributions to operational planning frameworks.
19 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
The University of Maryland, College ParkBS, Computer Science, BS, Computer Science at University of Maryland
Stackoverflow
38reputation
1kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (10)
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
ros10
robotics9
yaml7
bayesian6
inference6
pymc6
python6
model-fitting6
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
KCL-Planning/ROSPlan
Nov 2016 - Jan 2017
The ROSPlan framework provides a generic method for task planning in a ROS system.
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:5 commits, 6 PRs, 3 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Ron focused on improving the ROSPlan framework's functionality and reliability. Their contributions included correcting errors in operator and predicate handling within the knowledge base. They also implemented waypoint management features within the mapping interface, including adding, removing, and visualizing waypoints. Additionally, the user addressed YAML configuration issues to prevent errors during planning server calls.
task-planningmethodgenericrosplanning
ronwalf/Planning
Oct 2011 - Aug 2020
Contributions:34 commits, 2 PRs, 9 pushes in 8 years 11 months
representationsimilarhaskell-libraryhaskellparsing
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