Catharine McGhan's homepage at the University of Cincinnati

Hey all, I've moved on from my postdoc at Caltech (affiliated with NASA JPL!) to an assistant professor position at the University of Cincinnati! If you came here from an old Caltech link (or an older UMich link (or a super-old defunct WAM or GLUE link, wow)), welcome! If you came here from a search engine instead... Salutations, websurfer! :)

My resume... updated 2007/11/29, so you should probably check out my LinkedIn profile or my Google Sites page instead (they're a bit more up-to-date right now, at least in terms of my resume and CV).

Publications:

New publications to-be-added soon!

C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "Human Intent Prediction Using Markov Decision Processes," Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, AIAA, revision submitted April 2014. [---]
C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "Human Productivity in a Workspace Shared with a Safe Robotic Manipulator," Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, AIAA, to appear 17 January 2014 (online). [to be uploaded]
C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "Towards Guaranteeing Safe and Efficient Human-Robot Collaboration Using Human Intent Prediction," AIAA Space 2012 Conference, AIAA, Pasadena, CA, Sept. 11-13 2012. [to be uploaded]
C. McGhan, A. Nasir, and E. Atkins, "Human Intent Prediction Using Markov Decision Processes," Infotech@Aerospace 2012 Conference, AIAA, Garden Grove, CA, June 19-21 2012. [to be uploaded]
C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "A Low-Cost Manipulator for Space Research and Undergraduate Engineering Education," Infotech@Aerospace Conference, AIAA, Atlanta, GA, April 2010. [to be uploaded]
C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "Physically-Proximal Human-Robot Collaboration: Enhancing Safety and Efficiency through Intent Prediction," Infotech@Aerospace Conference, AIAA, Seattle, WA, Apr. 6-9, 2009. (AIAA-2009-1950) [to be uploaded]

C. McGhan and E. Atkins, "A Virtual Rover Interface for Collaborative Human-Robot Exploration Teams," Proc. Infotech@Aerospace Conference, AIAA, Rohnert Park, CA, May 2007.
C. McGhan, "Semi-Autonomous Inspection with a Neutral Buoyancy Free-Flyer," Scholarly Paper, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2006.
C. McGhan, R. Besser, R. Sanner, and E. Atkins, "Semi-Autonomous Inspection with a Neutral Buoyancy Free-Flyer," Proc. Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, AIAA, Keystone, CO, Aug. 2006.
C. McGhan, "A Trajectory Planner for Autonomous Structural Assembly," Undergraduate Research Project, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 2004.
C. McGhan, "A Trajectory Planner for Autonomous Structural Assembly," AIAA Region I-MA Student Conference, Blacksburg, VA, March 2004.

Links:

My LinkedIn profile, if you're interested :)
My (umich) Google Sites page, which is a bit more formally-written than this one.
My Google Scholar page, yay-fun.

Deprecated links:

My homepage on the WAM server... and my homepage on the GLUE server... both redirect here, as does my homepage on the UMich AFS server now.

My ENGR477 group project at UMich, a virtual reality sim. for the A2SysLab's AER rover. (Moved from where it was originally hosted on my personal umich.edu webspace.)

Short work history:

I have worked at the Space Systems Lab (SSL) at the Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility (NBRF) at the Universty of Maryland, where I received my bachelor's and Master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering.
(Here is a page that gives a little information on the SCAMP and SCAMP SSV platforms, which are underwater robotic vehicles that I worked on making semiautonomous while I was there. (I only managed to half-update the webpages before I left, though. I used the SCAMP vehicle for my research, and I was technically in charge of the SCAMP SSV vehicle, but not in charge of the SCAMP vehicle, even though I was using SCAMP more and did all the upkeep on it... it's complicated. I wasn't supposed to be "officially" in charge of both SCAMP vehicles at the same time. ^_^ ) )

I completed my Ph.D thesis work at the University of Michigan working under Prof. Ella Atkins at the Autonomous Aerospace Systems (A2Sys) Lab (cool, no? :) For about a year, I worked with a PC/104-slash-PCI/104-based rover system that had originally been developed at Maryland (and has gotten a few processor upgrades since then:). I've helped support that platform on and off over the years, along with the PC/104-based TableSat systems my advisor likes to use as teaching platforms in ENGR151 (a freshman-level advanced programming course). My main research platform, however, was a small, lightweight robotic manipulator arm (made from COTS parts) that was used in IRB-approved human subject testing, affectionately referred to as the MichiganMan(ipulator)-Arm. (The pages haven't been updated in an age -- we were all more concerned with the research than with website updates! ;) -- so if the server's down, you can likely go look at the pages on the Wayback Machine and not miss too much.)

After graduating from U of M, I moved to Pasadena, California and worked for a little over two years at Caltech as a postdoctoral scholar for Richard Murray in his CDS group, as part of the (Engineering) Resilient Space Systems working group, on a project that was a joint undertaking with NASA JPL, MIT, and WHOI (it's some pretty interesting and wide-ranging stuff :)
The Resilient Space Systems project is still going on for a bit longer, and is transitioning to different funding to continue the development of resilient algorithms that can deal explicitly with risk. I'm hoping to continue some of the research here at UC :)

Currently, I am at the University of Cincinnati and working as an assistant professor for the Department of Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics in the College of Engineering, and setting up my new Autonomous Systems for SPACE ROBOTICS Lab (and no, I'm not yelling there, it's an acronym ;)
--Wish me luck! :)


Email me @ cat.mcghan_AT_uc.edu (or mcghancl_AT_ucmail.uc.edu) if you're interested in what I do; I'd be happy to discuss it! (But no SPAM please, I'm trying to avoid canned goods ;)



Last updated 2016/09/28.