Alexandre Amice
Alexandre Amice

Final Year PhD Student at MIT CSAIL/LIDS

MIT

I am a final-year PhD candidate at MIT, advised by Pablo Parrilo and Russ Tedrake, working at the intersection of mathematical optimization, robotics, and reliable autonomy. My research develops scalable algorithms for high-performance decision-making, particularly in robotics.

I am interested in the entire decision-making pipeline, from high-level modeling, high-performance solver implementations, and low-level linear algebra to enable faster optimal decisions. I specialize in semidefinite programming and sums-of-squares optimization and development of convex optimization solvers. A central theme in my work is turning mathematical structure into computation. I build algorithms that exploit polynomial, conic, and graph structure to make difficult problems tractable, and am committed to distributing robust, open-source implementations of my methods.

I wrote CCosmo, a C++ first-order conic solver family, and VEGA, a decomposition solver for Graphs of Convex Sets. I am also an active contributor to Drake’s optimization, geometry, and planning stack. I am interested in industrial research roles where rigorous optimization, scalable algorithms, and high-quality software can push the frontier of AI, robotics, autonomy, and scientific computing.

Experience

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Doctoral Student

MIT

Member of Russ Tedrake’s Robot Locomotion Group and Pablo Parrilo’s Optimization Group.

Open Source Developer

Drake Robotics Toolbox

Contributions to planning, mathematical optimization, and symbolic algebra packages.

Research Intern

Robotics and AI Institute

Research in model-based control of highly dynamical systems.

Robotic Perception Intern

Uber Advanced Technology Group

Research and development of radar perception systems.

Education

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PhD Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

MIT

Thesis: Strong Convex Relaxations and Tailored Conic Solvers with Application in Robotics

MS Robotics

University of Pennsylvania

Thesis: Optimal Constraint Relaxation; Theory and Application to Problems in Robotics

BSE Electrical Engineering and Mathematics

University of Pennsylvania

Summa Cum Laude

Research Projects

Efficient Linear Algebra

Efficient Linear Algebra

Solving linear systems of equations is a fundamental subroutine in many algorithms. What structures are amenable to solving linear equations even faster.