About
Dr. Aniket Bera is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. He directs the interdisciplinary IDEAS Lab — Intelligent Design for Exploration and Augmented Systems — a robotics‑first group that studies how embodied agents plan, perceive, and collaborate safely with people. The lab’s emphasis is on motion planning with guarantees, human–robot collaboration, multi‑robot coordination, and manipulation in complex, dynamic environments. Computer vision powers perception and mapping (SLAM at scale, multi‑sensor fusion, and 3D scene representations), while graphics/VR supports simulation, evaluation, and human‑in‑the‑loop studies.
His research agenda combines geometric reasoning with modern learning methods. Current threads include: planners with explicit safety margins and recovery behavior; intent‑aware navigation and shared autonomy; scalable multi‑agent forecasting and simulation; contact‑rich manipulation and mobile manipulation; digital twins for verification and sim‑to‑real transfer in regulated settings; and learning from demonstrations paired with foundation models for robots (vision‑language‑action and diffusion/trajectory policies) for rapid skill capture and retargeting across tools, fixtures, and robot form factors.
Dr. Bera works closely with federal partners across the Department of Defense (e.g., ARL and Navy‑aligned efforts) as well as industry, including Adobe Research, Eli Lilly, Disney Research, Intel and others. These collaborations help turn fundamental advances into tested deployments, shared datasets, and reproducible toolchains.
He currently serves as Senior Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA‑L) in Planning & Simulation. He has held leadership roles across the graphics/robotics communities, including Conference Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH Motion, Interaction and Games (MIG 2022) and Outreach Chair for the ACM/EG Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA 2023). Prior to Purdue, he was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also completed his Ph.D. in 2017. He holds an adjunct appointment at the University of Maryland at College Park and is the founder of Project Dost.
His work has received multiple Best Paper awards and finalist honors across robotics and graphics/VR communities, including at ICRA, IEEE VR, ISMAR etc. alongside recognition in major media outlets such as CBS, WIRED, Forbes, Fast Company, and NPR. He has authored over 70 papers (3,500+ citations), secured multiple patents, and his group’s research is supported by federal agencies and industry partners.
Dr. Bera's research has been featured on CBS, WIRED, Forbes, FastCompany, NPR, etc.
Note: This WWW isn't updated regularly. For full list of publications, grants and workshops please refer to CV or Google Scholar.
Now Hiring
- If you're looking for graduate admissions (MS/PhD) , please email me and apply to the Purdue CS. Please note that all admission decisions are taken by the committee.
- If you're already a student at Purdue, the best way to increase the chances of a response to an e-mail is to read one of my recent papers and include a concise paragraph with the benefits and drawbacks of the main idea as well as possible improvements you'd be interested in trying and sending me an email with your CV and background.
Students
For a full list of current/past students, go to the IDEAS page at https://ideas.cs.purdue.edu/people/.