Erion Plaku is a Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) and the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS). At NSF, Dr. Plaku is part of the Robust Intelligence cluster and co-leads the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes program. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Plaku was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University (2020-2023) and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Catholic University of America (2010–2020). Dr. Plaku received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Rice University (2008). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics at Johns Hopkins University (2008–2010).

Courses Taught at GMU

Algorithms (CS583)	Fall 2023
Data Mining (CS480)	Spring 2022
AI (CS580)	Fall 2022

Courses Taught at CUA

AI	Spring 2015, 2017-2019
Introduction to Robotics	Spring 2011, 2014, 2016
Machine Learning	Summer 2019
Data Analysis	Fall 2018, Spring 2019
Theory of Computing	Spring 2011-2019
Object-Oriented Programming	Fall 2014-2016
Introduction to Programming	Fall 2010-2016, 2018

Introduction to Robotics

Check out the lecture notes, programming assignments, and support code for the robotics course. If you are an instructor and are interested in the material, send me an email to obtain the LaTeX source files for the lecture notes as well as solutions to programming assignments and additional code to enhance the lectures.

Senior Design

Senior design was a two-semester course offered at CUA where senior undergraduate students work closely with a faculty member on a senior-design project, which provides the students with research experience. This is the list of senior-design projects where I have served as a research advisor.

• Michael Morgan, Joseph Santschi, James Conroy, James Lucas, Khrysitian-Alexander Tran (2018– 2019): “Exploration of Unknown Environments using a Team of Aerial and Ground Robots”
• Taner Tuncer and Abdulaziz Alhuthali (2018–2019): “Making Music with AI”
• Tsotne Kvelashvili, John Paul McPherson, Dulanjana Jayawardane (2016–2017): “UAV Swarm-based Antenna System” (1st place)
• Andrew Wells, Timothy Danchik, Peter Kuebler, Phillip Samra (2015–2016): “Target Tracking by a Team of Unmmaned Aerial Vehicles”
• Matthew Dillon and Jorge Coronado (2014–2015): “Self-Balancing Skateboard”
• Matthew Melly and Lance Van Arsdale (2014–2015): “Mixed Real and Virtual Environments”
• Iyeol Beniam, Hilary Bruynell, and Elena Fafaul (2013–2014): “Robot Wars” (1st place)
• Patrick Gilfoil and Po Ming Chen (2013–2014): “3D Gaming with Physics Engines”
• Duong Le, Tuan Nguyen, Thanh Nguyen (2012–2013): “Kuka YouBot – At Your Service” (1st place)
• Hung Tran (2012–2013): “Using Kinect to Recognize Body-Language Gestures”
• Joseph Lattisaw (2011–2012): “Exploration of Unknown Environments by a Team of Robots”
• Minh Le (2011–2012): “Multi-Goal Motion Planning”
• Phuong Pham (2011–2012): “Motion Planning with Moving Obstacles”
• Kevin Lynn and Mohammed Abotaleb (2010–2011): “Axes Robotic Arm Designed to Pick Up Items Based on a Specific Color”