University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Urbana, IL | August 2026 – Present
Ph.D. Student in Computer Science, Advisor: Prof. Nancy Amato
University of New Mexico | Albuquerque, NM | August 2022 – May 2026
B.S. in Computer Science w/ Mathematics Minor, Departmental Honors (Advisor: Prof. Lydia Tapia) & Cum Laude.
CS Ph.D. Fellowship - UIUC Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, 2026
• Awarded merit fellowship granted to select Ph.D. students in recognition of an outstanding academic record.
CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Honorable Mention), 2026
• Selected among top North American computing undergraduates for outstanding research impact and potential.
Faculty Mentored Research Award - UNM Office of the Vice President for Research, 2026
• Awarded alongside Dr. Lydia Tapia for the university's most outstanding faculty-student research collaboration
Convocation Student Speaker - UNM School of Engineering, 2026
• Selected by the Dean's Office to represent the graduating class and address faculty, peers, and guests.
Outstanding Senior Award - UNM School of Engineering, 2026
• Selected by faculty as the top graduating Computer Science senior for academic excellence and research impact.
Best Presentation Award - Southwest Robotics Symposium, 2025
• Awarded 1st place among 10 invited speakers (selected from ~50 accepted abstracts) for a research talk.
[1] Yazied Hasan, Adrian B. Faust, Evan C. Carter, Lydia Tapia, “Exploiting LiDAR Symmetries to Enhance Value Estimation Policies,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Journal. Feb. 2026. (To Be Presented at IROS 2026).
[2] Adrian B. Faust, Yazied Hasan, Vadim Polyakov, Jared Saia, Lydia Tapia, “Post-Learning Adaptability of Reinforcement Learning Policies to Noise,” (Under Review, Conference Paper).
[3] Adrian B. Faust, Yazied Hasan, Lydia Tapia, “Improving Real-World Policy Robustness at No Additional Training Cost,” Southwest Robotics Symposium. Tempe, AZ. Oct. 2025. (Best Presentation Award).
UIUC Parasol Lab | Graduate Research Assistant | August 2026 – Present
Advisor: Prof. Nancy Amato
• Exploring sample-efficient training paradigms for robotic foundation models for improved reliability and sample efficiency in motion planning tasks.
Sandia National Laboratories | Materials Discovery Research Intern | May 2026 – August 2026
Advisor: Dr. Jeffery Greathouse
• Reduced prediction loss by 47% over state-of-the-art benchmark for negative thermal expansion (NTE) discovery by designing custom deep neural networks to overcome extreme small-data constraints (~350 samples).
• Achieved zero-shot validation of 4 novel NTE materials by developing a novel screening pipeline leveraging model uncertainty to shortlist high-confidence predictions, independently confirmed by recent experimental literature.
UNM Tapia Lab | Undergraduate Research Assistant | December 2022 – May 2026
Advisor: Prof. Lydia Tapia
• Published RA-L journal paper, and led first-author submission on using task symmetries and sensor noise to improve RL policies at inference time with validation on physical hardware.
• Designed and deployed physical robotic validation of Deep Reinforcement Learning policies on moving obstalce avoidance tasks.
UNM Motorsports Formula Student | Software Team Lead | August 2023 – June 2026
Advisor: Prof. Gene Kallenbach
• Directed development of embedded control systems for battery temperature, powertrain mechanics, and traction control.
• Secured the best electric vehicle finish in UNM history, achieving multiple top-20 global placements in events at FSAE International Competition.
NSF REU in Robotics at University of Southern California | Visiting Research Assistant | June 2023 – August 2023
Advisors: Prof. Somil Bansal and Prof. Stefanos Nikolaidis
• Collaborated across two labs to build an automated testing system to detect and classify failure types in complex motion planning tasks using generated quality-diverse task scenarios.
UNM Baca Lab | Undergraduate Research Assistant | January 2023 – May 2023
Advisors: Dr. Robert Taylor and Prof. Justin Baca
• Analyzed correlations in bacterial biomarkers to enable rapid pneumonia diagnostic protocols.
[1] “Improving Real-World Policy Robustness at No Additional Training Cost,” Southwest Robotics Symposium. Tempe, AZ. Oct 2025. (Best Presentation Award, Only Undergraduate Presenter).
[2] “Exploiting Symmetries for Robust Motion Planning in Real-World Environments,” UNM CS Student Conference. Albuquerque, NM. April 2025. (Only Undergraduate Presenter)
[3] “Enhancing Value Estimation Policies by Post-Hoc Symmetry Exploitation” UNM CS Conference. Albuquerque, NM. April 2024. (Only Undergraduate Presenter)
UNM Men’s Lacrosse | Co-Founder & Team Captain | August 2022 – May 2026
• Founded the organization freshman year and raised funds to hire a full coaching staff and fund national travel over 4 years.
• Led the team to 2 Rocky Mountain Conference Titles while managing travel schedules to 6 states and budgets.
UNM CS Chair Student Leadership Committee | Class Representative | October 2022 – May 2025
• Provided guidance to the UNM CS Department Chair on student needs and approved course fee spending.
UNM Office of the Provost | Teaching in the Age of AIs Panelist | March 2023
• Participated as a panelist in a university-wide forum discussing the integration and implications of AI in higher education, with an audience of over 900 attendees.
ICRA 2025 | Student Volunteer | May 2025
Languages: Python, Java, C++, C, MATLAB, SQL, Haskell
Robotics & ML: PyTorch, TensorFlow, CUDA, ROS, Gymnasium, MuJoCo, RLlib, Stable Baselines3, GNNs
Tools: Git, Linux, CAN Bus, LaTeX