Narek Harutyunyan
CV

PhD student · EECS · UC Berkeley

Narek Harutyunyan

I work on robot learning: policies that transfer across robot bodies, controllers whose stability can be certified, and the sim-to-real pipelines that carry both onto hardware.

Curriculum vitae PDF Google Scholar LinkedIn Email
Fig. 0 — The Lorenz attractor (σ = 10, ρ = 28, β = 8/3), integrated live in your browser. See it flown by a drone in a long-exposure photo.
Berkeley, California 37.87° N, 122.26° W Local time

01

About

I'm a PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, supported by the Berkeley Fellowship. I work where robot learning meets control: cross-embodiment visuomotor policies, reinforcement learning with certified stability, and sim-to-real transfer for legged, aerial, and mobile manipulators.

I earned my B.S. in Computer Engineering at Brown University, where I spent three years in Nora Ayanian's ACT Lab working on multi-robot systems and quadrotor swarms. I've twice been a Robotics Institute Summer Scholar at Carnegie Mellon, in Sebastian Scherer's AirLab and Guanya Shi's LeCAR Lab, and a SURF fellow at Caltech in Soon-Jo Chung's Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab.

Portrait of Narek Harutyunyan
Now
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer SciencesUC Berkeley · 2026 –
Before
B.S., Computer EngineeringBrown University · 2022 – 2026
Interests
Robot learning, whole-body control, sim-to-real transfer, multi-robot systems

02

Research

  1. Carnegie Mellon University · LeCAR Lab

    Robotics Institute Summer Scholar · Advisor Guanya Shi

    Cross-embodiment visuomotor policies for wheeled, legged, and aerial manipulators.

    May 2026 – Present

  2. Caltech · Aerospace Robotics and Control Lab

    Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow · Advisor Soon-Jo Chung

    ContractionPPO: certifiably stable RL controllers, deployed on the Unitree Go1 and Booster T1.

    May – Sep 2025

  3. Carnegie Mellon University · AirLab

    Robotics Institute Summer Scholar · Advisor Sebastian Scherer

    MapExRL: long-horizon indoor exploration with reinforcement learning and predicted maps.

    May 2024 – Jul 2025

  4. Brown University · ACT Lab

    Undergraduate Researcher · Advisor Nora Ayanian

    Quadrotor swarms: multi-agent RL, formation flight, and downwash aerodynamics.

    May 2023 – May 2026

03

Publications

  1. IEEE RA-L · 2026Co-first author

    ContractionPPO: Certified Reinforcement Learning via Differentiable Contraction Layers

    V. Zinage*, N. Harutyunyan*, E. Verheyden*, F. Hadaegh, S.-J. Chung

    IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2026

    Paper Project Video

  2. ICAR · 2025Co-first author

    MapExRL: Human-Inspired Indoor Exploration with Predicted Environment Context and Reinforcement Learning

    N. Harutyunyan*, B. Moon*, S. Kim, C. Ho, A. Hung, S. Scherer

    IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2025. Also presented at the ICRA 2025 Workshop on Structured Learning for Efficient, Reliable, and Transparent Robots.

    Paper Project Video

  3. ICRA · 2025

    MapEx: Indoor Structure Exploration with Probabilistic Information Gain from Global Map Predictions

    C. Ho*, S. Kim*, B. Moon, A. Parandekar, N. Harutyunyan, C. Wang, K. Sycara, G. Best, S. Scherer

    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2025

    Paper Project Video

  4. AIAA Aviation · 2024

    Downwash Dynamics: Impact of Quadrotor Separation on Forces, Moments, and Velocities for Dense Formation Flight

    A. Kiran, N. Harutyunyan, N. Ayanian, K. Breuer

    AIAA Aviation Forum and ASCEND, 2024

    Paper PDF

Posters & projects

  1. Brown DL Day · 2024TAs' Choice Award

    RoboChaser

    O. Heng, N. Harutyunyan, J. Dhanda

    An iRobot Create 3 that follows a custom car. Brown University Deep Learning Day, 2024.

    Devpost

  2. Yale NERC · 2023

    Advancements in Multi-Robot Systems

    A. Min*, R. Hossain*, H. Izhar*, N. Harutyunyan*

    Northeast Robotics Colloquium (NERC), Yale University, 2023

    Poster

* Equal contribution Google Scholar

04

Robots

Footage from the labs I've worked in: swarms, quadrupeds, humanoids, and a few drones that paint.

01Humanoid locomotion, learned with RL
02Spot, trained in Isaac Lab
03A quadruped, a hoop, and a drone
04A swarm flying in a helix
05Drawing in sand with a magnet
06A quadcopter that paints
Click any clip to enlarge All 26 clips & photos

05

Teaching

  1. Spring 2024
    Fall 2024
    Spring 2026

    CSCI 1952Z: Robots as a Medium · Head TA

    Brown University · Course site

    Creating art with teams of robots; weekly labs for 75+ students.

  2. Fall 2025

    CSCI 1470: Deep Learning · Teaching Assistant

    Brown University

    Labs, workshops, and final-project mentoring for 120+ students.

  3. Fall 2023

    ENGN 0032: Introduction to Engineering · Teaching Assistant

    Brown University

    Prototyping, CAD, and electronics workshops for 100+ students.

06

Honors

  1. 2026

    Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study — one of three EECS recipients

  2. 2024, 2026

    Robotics Institute Summer Scholar — Carnegie Mellon University

  3. 2025

    Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship — Caltech

  4. 2024

    TAs' Choice Award, Deep Learning Day — Brown University

  5. 2024 –

    Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society

  6. 2023, 2024

    Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards — Brown University

  7. 2023, 2024

    Huys Foundation STEM Scholar — about 5% selection rate

Service

  1. 2026

    Reviewer, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)

  2. 2025

    Reviewer, International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR)

07

Contact