About Me
Hello! I am Minghan Wei, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in 2022, where I was fortunate to be advised by Prof. Volkan Isler. Before joining FAU, I worked as a robotics engineer at Google and iRobot.
My research aims to enable autonomous robots to operate reliably in large-scale, complex, and previously unseen environments. I am interested in how robots can efficiently perceive their surroundings, reason about uncertainty and resource limitations, and make long-horizon decisions under real-world constraints.
To achieve this goal, my research spans robotic perception, mapping, planning, machine learning, and foundation models, with applications in field robotics, environmental monitoring, intelligent manipulation, and multi-robot systems. I enjoy combining principled algorithm design with real robotic systems to develop solutions that are both theoretically grounded and practically deployable.
News
- June, 2026: Our work “Unblocking the Path: VLM-Assisted Robot Navigation in Indoor Environments” was presented at the CVPR Workshop on Deployment of Foundation Models for Embodied AI.
- June, 2025: Excited to share that our NSF proposal “CRII: FRR: Towards Energy-optimal Multi-Robot Navigation for Time-critical Field Tasks” has been awarded!
- June, 2023: I will be joining Florida Atlantic University on August 7, 2023 as an assistant professor to pursue my robotics research.
- June, 2022: I have joined Google as a Software Engineer in the Augmented Reality - Motion tracking team.
- Jan, 2022: I have joined iRobot as a Senior Robotics Software Engineer working on the mapping and planning for the autonomous vacuum cleaners.
- June, 2021: This summer I would be a Data Science intern at 3M.
- Jan, 2020: I would be a Research Intern from January to August at Samsung Research America - New York.
Education
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
PhD, Computer Science, Aug 2016 - Jan 2022
Minneapolis, MN, US
Australian National University
Exchange Student, July 2014 - December 2014
Canberra, Australia
Nanjing University of Science and Technology
B.E. in Computer Science and Technology, Sep 2012 - June 2016
Nanjing, China
Experiences
Assistant Professor, Florida Atlantic University
Aug 2023 - Present, Boca Raton, FL
Software Engineer, Google
Jun 2022 - June 2023, Mountain View, CA
Senior Robotics Software Engineer, iRobot
Jan 2022 - Jun 2022, Remote
Data Science Intern, 3M
June 2021 - Aug 2021, Remote
Research Intern, Samsung Research America - New York
Jan 2020 - Aug 2020, New York, NY
Summer Intern, Robotics Institute, CMU
June 2015 - Sep 2015, Pittsburgh, PA
More About Me
- My wife and I like playing video games together, e.g. Fortnite in duos mode, It Takes Two, Mario Kart.
- We also like outdoor activities, such as tubing, kayaking in national or state parks.
- We have two cats at home.