Bio: Corina Barbalata, Louisiana State University

Corina Barbalata is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, at Louisiana State University (LSU), United States. She is the co-director of the iCORE Laboratory and a fellow in the Costal Studies Institute at LSU. She is also the co-director of the High-School Student Research Program in the College of Engineering at LSU.  She received a B.S degree from Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania in 2011. In 2013 through the VIsion and RoBOTics (VIBOT) program, she got her double MS degree in Computer Vision and Robotics from Heriot-Watt University (Scotland, UK) and University of Burgundy (France). She received her PhD from the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, UK) in 2017, and between 2017 and 2019 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering department at University of Michigan, United States. 

Dr. Barbalata and her group are working on proposing solutions for real-world robotics applications with social and environmental merits, through the combination of theoretical, computational, and experimental methods for the design new reactive capabilities for autonomous robotic systems working in complex and dynamic environments. Her research interests are in physics- and data-driven modeling of vehicle-manipulator systems, development of model-based control structures for autonomous robotic systems, and scene understanding and interpretation for robotic navigation. Her application domains are marine robotics and industrial automation. She is the recipient of the NSF Career Award in 2024.