Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering
- PhD, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN
- MS, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY, UK
- BS, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF GUILAN, IRAN
Dr. Vahraz Honary is an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of San Diego and director of VADER Lab (Vision, Autonomy, Decision-Making, Embedded Systems and Robotics).
His research focuses on autonomous and multi-robot systems, embedded artificial intelligence and robotic search and rescue. His group studies how teams of robots can locate targets from indirect clues, coordinate tasks under weak or intermittent communication, and perform perception and decision-making on resource-constrained embedded platforms. Current projects include decentralized multi-robot task allocation, autonomous field robots integrating lidar, GPS, IMU, and vision, machine learning for navigation on low-cost robotic platforms and deep learning for defect detection in composite materials. This work includes collaborations with faculty in mechanical engineering and computer science at USD.
Dr. Honary’s work with undergraduate researchers has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at IEEE UEMCON 2025.
He received his PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where his research focused on molecular communication. His background in communication systems continues to inform his work on distributed robotic systems operating under noisy, intermittent and unreliable communication.
Lab website: https://sites.google.com/view/
Scholarly Work
- With Taudeusz Wycocki, "Molecular communication system with non-absorbing receiver ," Nano Communication Networks, vol. 28, 2021.