Byung-Cheol Min

Byung-Cheol Min, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Purdue University


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Welcome to my website. My name is Byung-Cheol Min, and I go by "B.C.". I am an Associate Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University, where I direct the SMART Lab (www.smart-laboratory.org). I am an affiliated faculty member with the Purdue Robotics Accelerator (PRA), the Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON), and the Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF). Since 2022, I co-lead the Realizing the Digital Enterprise (RDE) Research Impact Area, which includes 60 faculty members from six departments across the college to stimulate multi-disciplinary collaboration using socio-technical approaches. I received a B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering and a M.S. in Electronics and Radio Engineering with a specialization in Automatic Control from Kyung Hee University in 2008 and 2010, a Ph.D. degree in Computer and Information Technology with a specialization in Robotics from Purdue University in 2014. From 2014 to 2015, I held a postdoctoral fellow position at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.

I am a roboticist. I conduct both basic and applied research on robotics with regard to its scientific and engineering aspects, and combine practical and theoretical approaches to solve real-world problems. My research interests stand at the intersection of human-robot interaction and multi-robot systems, and I explore problems of planning and control, algorithms, and robot learning in these areas and apply them to field robotics and to assistive technology and robotics. Recently, I have worked on designing algorithms and systems to enable multiple robots to collaborate with each other in a distributed way and to work with humans as a multi-human-multi-robot team. I have also studied how learning methods can enable robots to flexibly interact with any humans, in any situation, anywhere.

I am a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2019, and have received numerous awards from my current university, including the Purdue PPI Outstanding Faculty Award in Discovery in 2019, the Purdue CIT Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2019, the Purdue CIT Outstanding Faculty Award in Discovery in 2019 and 2021, the Purdue Focus Award in 2020, the Purdue PPI Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration Award in 2021, and the Purdue Corps of Engagement Award in 2022. I was named a Purdue University Faculty Scholar in 2021, which is one of the highest research honors at Purdue where the University Faculty Scholars Program recognizes outstanding faculty who are on an accelerated path for academic distinction. I also led the Purdue-Hongik Team that placed as a finalist in the NASA Space Robotics Challenge Phase 2. My research has been supported by various external funding agencies including the NSF, NIFA, NIJ, and UNSA. I have published over 30 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 60 peer-reviewed conference papers. I have served as an associate editor of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and a co-organizer of the NSF workshop to Explore US/Korean Collaboration in Human-Friendly Co-Robotic Technologies.