Saurav Agarwal, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, was awarded the 2015 Roberto Padovani Scholarship from Qualcomm in recognition of his exemplary contributions toward Qualcomm’s research efforts in robotics while participating as an intern. Eight recipients of this year’s scholarship each receive a $5,000 academic scholarship.
The Roberto Padovani Scholarship was created in 2008 to recognize Qualcomm’s corporate research and development interns who demonstrate technical superiority during summer internships. The scholarship is named for Roberto Padovani, who was Qualcomm’s chief technical officer for almost a decade and who was a leading innovator of the company. Candidates for the scholarship are nominated by their mentors or managers at the end of the internship.
Saurava’s research at Qualcomm was in the area of “Simultaneous Mapping and Planning for Aerial Robots using Vision Based Sensing.” His efforts focused on developing algorithms and implementing them on real hardware using Qualcomm technology to create the next generation of autonomous UAVs.
During his internship, Saurav and his mentor Dr. Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, a computer science graduate from Texas A&M, filed six inventions for the new technology they created. They hope to demonstrate the results of their research in the coming months.