About me
I am the Founder and President of Craftnetics, Inc., and a former Assistant Professor at California State University, Chico, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronic Engineering, and Advanced Manufacturing. I have led innovative projects in AI, robotics, and advanced manufacturing and have secured approximately $1.5M in funding as PI, Co-PI, or senior personnel, while leading a group of scientists in grant development efforts at Siemens.
My research approach centers on building a unified, generative, and malleable digital thread through data (e.g., CatalogBank), investigation of fundamental aspects (e.g., workflows, architectures, and algorithms), and their utilization as software (e.g., DocumentLabeler, GenAI Workbench, etc.) or hardware (e.g., GPU Workstations, etc.) stacks to bridge academia and industry.
Research Vision and Approach
My research focuses on integrating advanced artificial intelligence and systems science into engineering to investigate design and autonomy for cyber-physical production systems and their associated processes. My work primarily addresses the challenges within the design-to-operation pipeline, enhancing operational efficiency and innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration.
After graduate school, my professional research journey began at Siemens Corporate Technology, where I worked on Industry 4.0 technologies including additive manufacturing support structures, temporal logic-based planning for autonomous systems, and mixed reality programming interfaces. This experience led to the development of innovative concepts like the Siemens SpiderBots—omnidirectional legged robotic systems for expanding 3D printing workspace—and autonomous agricultural production systems (AgPods).
At Colorado State University, I expanded into generative design and engineering of cyber-physical systems, developing multimodal approaches that integrate textual, geometric, and graph data for comprehensive design automation. This work resulted in tools such as CatalogBank (a multimodal engineering design dataset) and DocumentLabeler (for semi-automatic annotation), and GenAI Workbench for advancing the field toward more generalizable and scalable methods.
Research Impact and Future Vision: This work provides the essential foundational capability for the next generation of engineering tools. By creating a unified digital model where architecture, function, and physical form are explicitly and automatically connected, it tackles a key prerequisite for next-generation Co-Design approaches. It lays the groundwork for future systems that can concurrently optimize all design aspects for various downstream purposes including sustainability, education, medicine, policy development, supply-chain optimization, and market analysis—enabling broader technical and socio-technical impact beyond traditional engineering domains.
My research philosophy emphasizes three key principles: developing generalizable and scalable methods that transcend specific applications, maintaining open and reproducible research practices, and fostering an inclusive collaborative environment. This approach has led to high-impact outcomes including publications and successful grant proposals.
Research Areas (with Past/ Published Research Projects):
Artificial Intelligence and Generative Design
| DocumentLabeler 2024 Artificial Intelligence and Generative Design ★ Featured Semi-automatic annotation tool for engineering system design documents |  |
| CatalogBank Dataset 2024 Artificial Intelligence and Generative Design ★ Featured Structured and interoperable catalog dataset with semi-automatic annotation tool for engineering system design |  |
Advanced Manufacturing (Smart Manufacturing/ Industry 4.0)
| Continuous Automated 3D Printing (AutoPrint, IMPACT 3D) 2022 Advanced Manufacturing, Smart Manufacturing ★ Featured Affordable and automated fused filament fabrication-based additive manufacturing system |  |
| Temporal Logic-based Planning for GantryAI 2018 Advanced Manufacturing, Smart Manufacturing ★ Featured Intelligent manufacturing systems with temporal logic-based autonomy |  |
| Support Structures For Additive Manufacturing of Solid Models 2017 Advanced Manufacturing, Smart Manufacturing ★ Featured U.S. Patent for additive manufacturing support structures |
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
| Mixed Reality Assisted Spatial Programming of Robotic Systems (HoloShifu) 2022 Robotics and Autonomous Systems ★ Featured Mixed reality system for spatial programming and control of robotic systems |  |
| Autonomous Agricultural Production System (Siemens AgPods) 2018 Robotics and Autonomous Systems ★ Featured Autonomous agricultural production system for precision farming |   |
| Mobile and Collaborative 3D Printing Robots (Siemens SpiderBots) 2017 Robotics and Autonomous Systems ★ Featured Agile manufacturing platform with mobile digital manufacturing robots |   |
Optimization, Control, and Systems Engineering
In many cases, the projects intersect with multiple research areas. For example, Retrieval Augmented work could be considered AI (as its core is in that domain), while its impact extends to Systems Engineering.
These studies in the provided areas have resulted in high-impact outcomes, including publications (such as patents, conference papers, and journal articles) and further collaborations. My portfolio provides more details on past projects. Ongoing and future projects in Generative Design and Engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems, Embodied AI for Advanced Manufacturing, and AI-based Scientific Discovery are not included above; please contact me if you are interested in learning more. Please note that our research will be published and the code will be shared to ensure reproducibility—either fully or partially—to protect intellectual property (the “secret sauce”).
Opportunities (for Students)
Internship: If you are a graduate student interested in an internship and/or getting more information about a project at Craftnetics, please send an email to info@craftnetics.ai. Please add your resume with details about your current interests.
Student Projects
Selected Student Projects - Expand to see more
| Vision-Based Robotic Control for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), 2021 Computer Vision, Robotics Capstone project with Mitchell Cabral, Jasmine Nguyen, Antony Aliotti, and Clarice Rucklos, developing a high-precision robotic system for SLAC. |   |
| Agricultural Production System: Hydrobot Craftnetics Inc, 2021 Autonomous Systems, Agricultural Robotics, Hydroponics, Cartesian Robots Hydrobot is an open-source agricultural automation system that uses a Cartesian pick-and-place robot to manage plant movement in a hydroponic NFT system. Designed to be modular, scalable, and low-cost, Hydrobot aims to automate all key stages of plant handling — from germination to harvest. |   |
| Compliant and Intelligent Grasping with Parallel Kinematic Mechanism and its Agricultural Application California State University, Chico, 2020 Compliant Grasping, Agricultural Robotics, PKMs, Computer Vision Capstone project demonstrating a vision-driven robotic system using a parallel kinematic robot (Omron Hornet 565) and compliant 3D-printed end-effector for accurate agricultural pick-and-place tasks in a simulated smart factory environment. |   |