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.
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.
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.
Zach is a master’s student who joined the group in Fall 2026. Zach earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas. As part of his work, he serves as the program manager for the SCOPE-1 mission within UT Austin’s Texas Spacecraft Laboratory.
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
Defended September 2018, University of Colorado Boulder, “Orbit Uncertainty Propagation with Separated Representations”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Defended April 2022, The University of Texas at Austin, “Low-Earth Orbit Trajectory Optimization in the Presence of Atmospheric Uncertainty”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Defended November 2017, University of Colorado Boulder, “Spawn Model Derivations for Multi-Object Orbit Determination within a Random Finite Set Framework”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Graduated May 2026, The University of Texas at Austin, “Verification of Surface Feature-Based Navigation Algorithms for SCOPE-1”. Thesis link coming soon!
Defended April 2016, University of Colorado Boulder, “Incorporating Uncertainty into Spacecraft Mission and Trajectory Design”. Click the link to read her thesis.
Defended July 2022, The University of Texas at Austin, “Applications of Random Finite Set-based Multi-Target Trackers in Space Situational Awareness”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Defended April 2025, The University of Texas at Austin, “Multi-target Tracking Algorithms for the Evolving Space Object Population”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Graduated August 2018, The University of Texas at Austin, “Sensor Tasking Utilizing Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Random Finite Set Framework”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Defended May 2025, The University of Texas at Austin, “Advancements in Space Object Detection, Tracking, and Management Using Information-Theoretic Approaches”. Click the link to read his thesis.
Defended August 2023, The University of Texas at Austin, “Bayesian Approaches to Low-Thrust Maneuvering Spacecraft Tracking”. Click the link to read his thesis.