Alikasim Budhwani

Hey there! I’m Alikasim (Ali for short), and welcome to my personal site/portfolio/blog where I nerd out about all things robotics (and controls).

A bit about me:

I am currently a Masters student in the department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Waterloo researching robot manipulation through contact under the supervision of Dr. Soo Jeon. Most of my current work is on making learned manipulation policies (like diffusion policies) safer to deploy on real hardware — I build safety monitors that use a learned world model to flag unsafe actions before they execute, without needing any labelled failure data. You can see that and my other robotics/controls projects on the projects page, and I write up deeper technical dives on the blog.

During my bachelors and internships, I have worked on numerous robotics projects for various sectors like nuclear, agriculture and additive manufacturing. You can find out more about it in my resume on this site!

If you have questions, or would like to connect or collaborate, feel free to reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

Enjoy your stay!