Varun Kasireddy is a Project Scientist at the AirLab at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on developing foundation models for robotics applications, with emphasis on multimodal perception and learning for novel domains and edge devices.
Prior to his current role, Varun worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in AirLab at CMU’s Robotics Institute, where he worked on multiple sensing modalities for inspection applications. His research included stereo and LiDAR-enhanced Structure from Motion (SfM) for detecting spall defects in infrastructure, as well as active thermography-based robotic inspection of aviation assets. He explored techniques to enhance thermal signatures for subsurface defect detection and developed image processing tools for analyzing thermographic data.
Before joining CMU, Varun worked as an adjunct teaching professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, teaching courses in structural engineering, laser scanning, and digital twins for civil infrastructure. He obtained his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from CMU in 2021, with his thesis focusing on using point cloud data to automatically detect and measure spall defects in concrete bridges.
Varun’s current research interests include:
- Multimodal perception and learning for robotics, including the adaptation of foundation models for novel domains and deployment on edge devices
- Advanced sensing technologies for infrastructure and aviation inspection, combining 3D sensing and thermographic techniques
- Cross-modal learning and fusion of visual, LiDAR, and thermal data for enhanced scene understanding and defect detection
- Robust perception systems for field robotics in challenging environments
He collaborates with other researchers in the lab to bridge the gap between state-of-the-art AI models and practical robotics applications, with a focus on creating systems that can operate reliably in real-world scenarios.