About Me
I am Josh Vander Hook, a Research Technologist at NASA JPL in the Maritime and Multi-Agent Autonomy(347N) group, where I have had the pleasure of working since 2015.
Here at JPL, I am working on projects which involve multi-vehicle collaboration, contact detection and tracking, and path planning. My main research interests are in distributed system design and cooperative Bayesian games. More info here, here, and here.
I completed my Ph.D in the department of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in 2015. It was my great pleasure to work with Dr. Volkan Isler, and the Robotic Sensor Networks lab. My thesis concerned competitive, online algorithms applied to multi-robot path-planning for sensing. E.g., using robots to mine geo statistical data (see: Precision Agriculture) or track invasive species.In my free time I enjoy boxing, climbing, camping, sailing, live music, and road-biking. I have also begun doing pro bono curriculm development for non-profit educational and STEM outreach organizations, including Mind Makers.
I encourage you to contact me directly if you are interested in discussing a possible project.