Dr. Cristi Vasile
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics
Lehigh University
About Dr. Cristi Vasile
Dr. Cristian-Ioan Vasile (Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics) earned a doctorate in systems engineering at Boston University, a second doctorate in control engineering, a master's in intelligent control systems and a bachelor's in computer science at Politehnica University of Bucharest. Before joining Lehigh's faculty, Vasile was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include enabling autonomy in robotic systems, planning for large fleets of robots, automated synthesis and decision making under uncertainty, and learning explainable robot behavior representations.
Motivation for students:
Are you aware of DEI issues in academia? Would you be able to craft a DEI Statement for a faculty application? This workshop will help you understand the issues that are relevant to today, and help you identify unconscious and implicit bias, identify strategies to help you handle microaggressions and stereotypes, and many more through case studies. Prof. Vasile has attended many workshops around DEI at both MIT and Lehigh, including CIMER, VISIONS, the Speak Up Series and more. He has received accolades for his efforts in DEI and outreach from funding institutions and is here to share best practices and stimulating conversations around the importance of DEI for graduate students. He will be assisted by Disha Kamale and Gustavo A. Cardona, MEM PhD students, in facilitating this workshop.