Ibrahima S. Sow

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Hi! I’m a second-year graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering - Research program at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a Belgian American Educational Foundation Scholar, and a member of the Robotic Exploration Lab. I am actively looking for full-time roles in Aerospace (GNC), Robotics or any other interesting opportunities, so definitely reach out!

Advised by Pr. Zac Manchester and Pr. Howie Choset, my current research focuses on real-time optimization-based planning, control, and navigation for agile robots and autonomous spacecraft. I also actively work on the system design, guidance, navigation, and control (GNC), flight software, and communication subsystems for our CubeSat missions (Py4, Argus-1, Argus-2).

Previously, I graduated with a B.S. in Electromechanical Engineering from Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 2022. My undergraduate research was centered on the development, experimental testing, and control of new sensors and actuators for minimally invasive endoscopic and surgical tools, and on local model-order reduction optimization for spacecraft reentry simulation.

I have interned at Space Applications Services as an Avionics and Embedded Systems Engineer Intern, primarily working on Ground Support Equipment (GSE) for payload development and testing, and at Redwire Space, as a Mechanical Engineer Intern, contributing to on-orbit space servicing systems.

My interests encompass everything that moves: real-time trajectory optimization, motion planning, control, navigation, and leveraging deep learning for high-performance autonomous systems, on Earth and beyond.

Email  /  LinkedIn  /  GitHub  /  Resume

news

Nov 12, 2024 Our On-Orbit Range-Only Navigation paper has been accepted to IEEE Aerospace 2025!
Jul 4, 2024 We presented our PY4 satellite mission paper to the SmallSat conference :satellite:
Jun 24, 2024 I presented our Soft Capture paper at iSpaRo’24 in Luxembourg :rocket:
Jun 10, 2024 I’ve been awarded a Conference Student Sponsorship by the European Space Agency (ESA)
Jan 10, 2023 Started my master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University!

selected publications

  1. relative_ranging.png
    On-Orbit Demonstration of Range-Only Navigation for Small Satellite Formations
    Ibrahima S. Sow, and Zachary Manchester
    IEEE Aerospace Conference, Mar 2025
  2. Py4_pic.jpeg
    The PY4 Mission: A Low-Cost Demonstration of CubeSat Formation-Flying Technologies
    Max Holliday, Rachel Ticknor, Jan Stupl, Roger Hunter, Paulo Fisch, Ibrahima S. Sow, Jacob Willis, and Zachary Manchester
    In AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites (SmallSat), Aug 2024
  3. approach.gif
    A Convex Formulation of the Soft-Capture Problem
    Ibrahima S. Sow, Geordan Gutow, Howie Choset, and Zachary Manchester
    IEEE International Conference on Space Robotics, Jun 2024
  4. go1_with_imu.jpg
    Multi-IMU Sensor Fusion for Legged Robots
    Shuo Yang, Zixin Zhang, John Z. ZhangIbrahima S. Sow, and Zachary Manchester
    under review at IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Jun 2024