Canada awards Ladd - twice!

June 3, 2002 -- Graduate student Andrew Ladd has received not one, but two awards, totaling $41,000 from Canada in support of his graduate studies at Rice.

Ladd received an NITC Bursary from McGill University and the Quebec government supporting his graduate studies in computer science. The Quebec government also awarded Ladd an FCAR fellowship in support of his graduate research in mathematics and computation.

Researching algorithmic robotics, Ladd, is a member of the Physical and Biological Computing group, led by Associate Professor Lydia Kavraki.

"Andrew's work stands out for its originality and rigorousness," Kavraki commented. "He combines a strong theoretical background with a genuine desire to create and implement algorithms that solve practical problems in robotics. Andrew has worked hard and has been very productive during the two years he has spent at Rice: he has published three papers, attended four conferences, and he is now finishing up his masters thesis. The two recent awards are very well deserved."

Ladd is currently focusing his research on applying ideas from motion planning to the problem of untangling a tangled mathematical knot. His general research interests lie in studying geometry, motion, uncertainty and underlying structure in high dimensional spaces in the context of robotics.

Ladd joined the computer science graduate program at Rice in 2000 after graduating from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Ladd says he enjoys being at Rice, and that he chose to come to Rice "for two reasons: a small, friendly department on a beautiful campus, and to study under Professor Lydia Kavraki."

For additional information on the Physical and Biological Computing group's research, see http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/Robotics/researchindex.html .