Adarsh Salagame

I am a PhD student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, advised by Alireza Ramezani at the SiliconSynapse Lab. I began the PhD at Northeastern University and moved with the lab to Illinois in 2026. My thesis work centers on trajectory optimization and MPC for a snake robot, exploring ways to exploit the redundant articulation and contact-rich environment interaction to traverse diverse terrain and perform tasks such as loco-manipulation. I am also working on multi-modal locomotion on ground-aerial platforms with variable morphologies, using posture manipulation in flight to reposition thrusters with respect to the center of mass for agile maneuvers and fault tolerance. Before my PhD, I spent a year at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution working on long-range autonomous underwater vehicles, and a year at the Indian Institute of Science developing autonomous flight for UAVs. I received my B.E. in Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad in 2019 and my M.S. in Robotics from Northeastern in 2022.