Faculty
Dr. Jones is an Associate Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics that specializes in data fusion and uncertainty quantification for astronautics. He is affiliated with both the Center for Space Research and the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. He is also the Director of the Texas Spacecraft Laboratory.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Ben completed his PhD in May 2025. His research interests include space situational awareness, multi-target tracking, and autonomous navigation. His recent work focuses on efficient tracking of large populations of space objects, including large satellite constellations and fragmentation events, using labeled random finite sets. Before coming to UT-Austin, Ben earned his BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University at Buffalo, where he led the UB Nanosatellite Laboratory’s Attitude Determination and Control group, and interned at the Air Force Research Laboratory. In his free time, Ben makes music and continues to develop the PAZ Engine, a family of cross-platform libraries for games and simulations.
Current Graduate Students
Anand is a Ph.D. student who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013 and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Emory University in 2011. He started at UT Austin in the Fall of 2021 after previously working as a civilian engineer with the Department of the Navy focusing on reliability engineering and machine learning. His research interests center on machine learning based pose estimation, deep space navigation, and general GN&C applications.
Paula is a master’s student who joined the group in Fall 2024. Paula earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has had internships at Cruise Automation, Sierra Space, and The MITRE Corporation. As part of her research, she serves as the program manager for the SCOPE-1 mission within UT Austin’s Texas Spacecraft Laboratory.
Miranda is a master’s student who joined the research group in Spring 2025. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Austin in Fall 2024. Her research interests include orbit optimization and determination, collision detection and avoidance, space debris tracking and mitigation, and space domain and situational awareness. Beyond academics, Miranda enjoys visiting Barton Springs and practicing Olympic-style weightlifting.
Quinn is a PhD student (co-advised with Dr. Ryan Russell) looking at on-board navigation and asteroid shape estimation for missions to asteroids and comets, linear covariance analysis, DOP analysis, and trajectory navigation planning. He has previously worked at Intuitive Machines, and obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in mathematics, a M.S. in Space Systems Engineering, and a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Utah State University.
Cedric’s research looks at how to partition admissible regions for rapid propagation using multi-fidelity methods. These capabilities can then be used for initial orbit determination and follow-up tracking and sensor tasking. Cedric received his B.S. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Sam is a Ph.D. student who joined the group in Fall 2024. Before coming to UT, he graduated with a Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities where he was the lead for the Small Satellite Research Laboratory’s Attitude Determination and Control team. Sam has held internships as a GN&C Engineer at Blue Canyon Technologies and Odyssey Space Research. His current research looks at collision risk analysis utilizing conceptual spaces.
Zee joined the Ph.D. program in Spring 2020. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin in Fall 2019. Zee has held internships at NASA JPL and at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and has worked at UT Austin’s Texas Spacecraft Laboratory as the chief engineer for the ARMADILLO mission. Her research interests lie in orbit determination, uncertainty quantification, space debris tracking, and mitigation. Her current research focuses on polynomial chaos-based methods of orbit determination with applications to tracking objects in cislunar space.
Bora is a Ph.D. student and joined in Fall 2024. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics and completed a Masters at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on uncertainty quantification and tracking of maneuvering targets in cislunar space. He enjoys reading and exercising.
Former Graduate Students