You Belong Here!

Eric Martinson, PhD, and Vijay John, PhD, mean it sincerely when they say exciting things are happening in Lawrence Technological University’s computer science program and it’s the place to be to learn and advance emerging technologies.

Advancing Research in Robotics and Machine Learning

With John recently joining the College of Arts + Sciences (CoAS) as a tenure-track associate professor, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, and computer vision are on the docket for computer science students.

A native of India, John spent 11 years in Japan, seven of which were teaching and researching at the Toyota Technological Institute in Nagoya, and four were with the Guardian Robot Project, RIKEN, in Kyoto where he worked life-like humanoid robots.

He received the Toyota Research Achievement Award for his contributions to intelligent vehicles and multimodal robotics.

Exploring Machine Perception

In his first semester at LTU, John is teaching computer vision, a part of machine learning utilizing sensors to make computers perceive or understand the environment. “We use sensors to give the data to the computer, and we teach different algorithms that allow the data to be deciphered,” he explained. He likened it to a camera being the eyes and the computer being the brain.

PhD student Amar Dabaja, who graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering earlier this year, believes these types of analogies are helping her grasp the basic concepts of computer vision, how “it’s replicating what our eyes do so easily, and we don’t even realize it.” Dabaja, an electrical hardware engineer at an automotive safety company, said John is currently teaching the physics of image formation and will soon delve into neural networks.

From Competition to Real-World Application

Martinson, chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, finds John’s expertise in the autonomous driving domain to be particularly positive for CoAS. “We have had this excellent program created by Dr. CJ Chung, who has been working with autonomous vehicles, researching, and teaching Lawrence Tech computer science students how to devise programs that run autonomous vehicles. “Dr. Chung’s evolutionary computations have been an effective teaching tool that has brought us to today. It’s exciting that Vijay’s work will build upon that work and help put it into actual practice, allowing it to grow,” Martinson said.

“We’ve focused on getting students to understand and create algorithms to get the car to follow commands,” he continued. With this knowledge, LTU teams have consistently had great success in the annual IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) over many years. “With Dr. John, we’re now focused on moving from competition to practicality,” Martinson said.

John’s joining CoAS will build on Chung’s success and take the program from competition to practicality. The autonomous vehicles that live on LTU’s campus have a limited number of sensors and work in a specific environment. There’s a gap between what the current vehicles can do and what’s needed to put them on the road. He said, “There’s a lot more computing power needed. It requires expertise and collaboration with industry, other universities, and lots of students!” John explained.

When computer science students learn computer vision, they will be working on algorithms with sensors on an actual vehicle. Autonomous vehicles include smaller delivery vehicles, seen around campus, and golf course buggies. There’s much scaling up from a delivery robot to an actual vehicle on the road. Students will also learn what academic research is and how industry works.

Martinson has been speaking with local companies in the autonomous car space about helping LTU develop road-ready vehicles. He said, “One of the things I think that’s been missing is the machine vision/perception. As we integrate Dr. John’s experience into our computer science program, it’s a sweet path for students to go from competition to getting involved with autonomous driving.”

This, he believes, helps LTU stand out from other computer sciences programs. “CJ has built it up to the point that we need more assistance, somebody who can spend a lot more effort on it and who knows about the subject.”

“There is greater opportunity and more potential to make career connections here. They get deeply involved in research and hands-on learning that show off their skills and passion for the field.”

– Eric Martinson, PhD, Chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science Department

Industry Involvement

Relationships with industry help LTU understand what’s needed in the marketplace. “What we hear over and over again from potential employers is they are looking for passionate students who’ve had some hands-on experience.” CoAS now has the potential to offer more opportunities for students to get deeply involved in computer vision and show off their skills to land better opportunities.

“International students really care about getting a job,” Martinson said. “There is greater opportunity and more potential to make career connections here. They get deeply involved in research and hands-on learning that show off their skills and passion for the field. They will appreciate being involved in state-of-the-art equipment and computer science.”

Hands-on research and learning are part and parcel of LTU’s motto “Theory and Practice.”

LTU’s Computer Science Program

The goal of the computer science program is “trying to keep computer science and math fresh and state of the art,” Martinson said. “We have multiple strong concentrations at the undergraduate level: cybersecurity, game software development, AI, and software engineering. We have recently revised the scientific software development concentration as part of our partnership with the Natural Sciences Department. Our graduate curriculum is also strong in computer science at the master’s and doctoral levels. Many of our faculty have come from industry with practical experience to share with all our students.”

Igri Fishta, who received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2025, just began her master’s degree in computer science in September with “Computer Vision and Scene Understanding” as one of her first courses. She says the class is opening her eyes to what robots can do. Fishta believes the course will help her with the object detection research project she’s undertaking with Martinson. Looking to the future, she said, “Seeing how the computer science field is changing so much and so fast, I would like to be part of a world where technology helps people simplify their life.”