Qureshi earns NSF CAREER Award
07-29-2026
Ahmed H. Qureshi, assistant professor in Purdue University's Department of Computer Science has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. (photo by Brian Powell)
Ahmed H. Qureshi, assistant professor in Purdue University's Department of Computer Science and director of the Cognitive Robot Autonomy and Learning (CoRAL) Lab, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to advance research that will help robots move more safely and efficiently through the physical world.
The award, titled "Learning for Robot Motion Planning using Physics Priors," supports research and education at the intersection of robot motion planning, machine learning, and applied mathematics.
Humans possess an intuitive understanding of how the physical world behaves, allowing them to coordinate complex movements and interact with their surroundings in real time, often with little to no explicit guidance. Robots are not yet capable of this level of adaptability and instead often require extensive expert demonstrations or trial-and-error interaction to acquire comparable capabilities reliably.
Qureshi's research aims to change that by embedding physical and mathematical structure directly into machine learning algorithms, enabling robots to learn more efficiently, plan motions reliably, and adapt to unfamiliar environments with less supervision.
"This award will support a long-term research program on structured robot learning," Qureshi said. "The central idea is to use the mathematical and physical structure underlying motion planning as a foundation for learning, rather than relying primarily on large datasets or extensive trial-and-error to learn that structure from scratch."
The project builds on ongoing research in Purdue Computer Science's CoRAL Lab, where Qureshi and his students develop learning-based methods that combine robotics, artificial intelligence, control theory and applied mathematics. The award will support graduate student research while expanding educational opportunities in this emerging field.
The next phase of the project will focus on developing scalable algorithms, testing them on increasingly complex robotic systems and integrating the research into student training.
Qureshi credits Purdue's strengths in computer science, robotics, and AI with making Purdue an ideal environment for the work, and the students in the CoRAL Lab for helping shape the research direction that led to the award.
The NSF CAREER Award is the National Science Foundation's premier award for early-career faculty. It recognizes researchers who demonstrate the potential to lead impactful research while integrating education and mentoring into their academic careers.
About the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University
Founded in 1962, the Department of Computer Science was created to be an innovative base of knowledge in the emerging field of computing as the first degree-awarding program in the United States. The department continues to advance the computer science industry through research. U.S. News & World Report ranks the department No. 16 and No. 19 overall in undergraduate and graduate computer science, respectively. Graduates of the program are able to solve complex and challenging problems in many fields. Our consistent success in an ever-changing landscape is reflected in the record undergraduate enrollment, increased faculty hiring, innovative research projects, and the creation of new academic programs. Learn more at cs.purdue.edu.