Dr Pragna Das
Assistant Professor, Computer Science and AI
Dr Pragna Das researches how robots navigate and coordinate in unknown and changing environments. She teaches the foundations of programming, physical AI and autonomy, bringing industry-focused robotics research into the classroom.
Biography
Before joining the University of York Mumbai, Dr Das was a BIEI Industry Research Fellow at the Institute for Safe Autonomy, University of York, UK. There she created industry-focused projects that connect academic research outcomes to industrial problems.
She previously held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (TecnioSpring) Fellowship, focusing on product innovation for autonomous ground vehicles and autonomous mobile robots, including robot-based product mapping in retail stores. She holds a PhD from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Research
Dr Das's research uses sensor fusion, computer vision and machine learning, including generative AI and recurrent neural networks, to help robots navigate and work together. She develops scalable solutions for fleet management, task planning and multi-robot coordination.
- Autonomous coordination for multiple mobile robots.
- Robot navigation in unknown and dynamic environments.
- Physical AI and vision-based manipulation.
- Human–robot collaboration.
Her work has applications in logistics, smart factories, retail, solar farms, agriculture and hazardous environments such as nuclear power plants. Her technical expertise includes SLAM, NAV2, point cloud segmentation, object detection, ROS/ROS2, Gazebo, MoveIt, PyTorch and TensorFlow.
Teaching
Dr Das teaches Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms, Deep Learning, and Autonomous Robots.
Professional Activities
- Industry engagement in the nuclear, agriculture and solar energy sectors
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow