2025 ExpandAI Summer Research Internship Program
In Summer 2025, the ExpandAI team launched a new internship program designed to give SDSU undergraduates and community college students hands-on experience in AI research. In partnership with SDSU’s MESA and STEM Pathways programs, nine students were selected to participate. Each student was paired with a UCSD graduate mentor and worked on research projects at the intersection of AI and robotics. The student projects are listed below.
Carlos Akerlundh (Community College Student)
Project: Understanding the need for new heuristics in path planning
Faculty advisor: Dr. Jun Chen
Graduate mentor: Jun Xiang
Nile Celaya (Community College Student)
Project: Drones: Programming and Optimization
Faculty advisor: Dr. Junfei Xie
Graduate mentor: Haomeng Zhang
Cesar Salinas (Undergraduate Student)
Project: Toward Real-Time Object Detection Using Lightweight CNNs on Micro UAVs
Faculty advisor: Dr. Junfei Xie
Graduate mentor: Dongge Jia
Jia Gapuz (Community College Student)
Project: Exploring Image Masking for Adaptive Intelligent SLAM (accepted by the 2025 SACNAS conference)
Faculty advisor: Dr. Bryan Donyanavard
Graduate mentor: Alles Rebel
Loc Nguyen & Randy Jabbo (Undergraduate Students)
Project: Using a 2-stage neural network system for real-world drone obstacle avoidance
Faculty advisor: Dr. Jun Chen
Graduate mentor: Jun Xiang
Tuong Truong (Undergraduate Student)
Project: Implementing VSLAM to Produce a Map for an Autonomous Miniature Car
Faculty advisor: Dr. Bryan Donyanavard
Graduate mentor: Changhoon Sung
Francisco Gomez (Undergraduate Student)
Project: Migrating Factory 4.0 Services to AWS
Faculty advisor: Dr. Bryan Donyanavard
Graduate mentor: Changhoon Sung
Fraser Meagher (Undergraduate Student)
Project: Implementing RRT for Efficient Drone Pathfinding in Complex Obstacle Environments
Faculty advisor: Dr. Junfei Xie
Graduate mentor: Ke Ma