Gustavo Cardona, Ph.D.

Gustavo A. Cardona is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University and Director of the Planning, Autonomy, and Reliable Control for Embodied Systems (PARCE) Laboratory. His research focuses on specification-driven autonomy for multi-robot systems interacting with people. He develops planning, decision-making, and control methods that integrate temporal logic, formal methods, optimization, machine learning, and physically aware control. His work addresses uncertainty, scalability, conflicting objectives, and safety in complex robotic missions. He has developed algorithms for multi-robot coordination, safe human–robot interaction, motion planning, and control synthesis. Applications include quadrotors, ground robots, robot swarms, autonomous vehicles, manipulators, and humanoid robots. Dr. Cardona earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University. His dissertation focused on scalable and robust planning for multi-robot systems using temporal logic. He also holds a master’s degree in industrial Automation and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His research has been recognized with Lehigh University’s Elizabeth V. Stout Dissertation Award and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics.