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About AI Racing Tech

AI Racing Tech is a multi-university program of students and faculty using autonomous racing to engage students, push untested boundaries, and drive research to ensure the highest caliber of safety for the future of commercial autonomy.

The AI Racing Tech team originated at the University of Hawai’i, Maui, in spring 2020, from an Autonomous Vehicle Technology class taught by Gary Passon. In 2021, the UH-led team expanded to include faculty and students from other schools, including the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Diego, and Carnegie Mellon University, competing as one of nine teams in the international Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC).

At IAC 2022 at Texas Motor Speedway, AI Racing Tech came in second only to PoliMOVE of Italy, establishing AI Racing Tech as the leading U.S. team in the competition. The following year, AI Racing Tech came in third at IAC 2023, held at CES in Las Vegas.

In the summer of 2023, team leadership was transferred to UC Berkeley under Allen Yang, Principal Investigator of the Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR) program, which operates within the FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality at Berkeley Engineering. Passon serves as Team Principal for the Berkeley-led team.

In January 2024, AI Racing Tech was one of only three teams chosen from the international IAC competition to test out and showcase the new Dallara-built AV-24, the world’s fastest autonomous racecar, unveiled at CES 2024. Further testing was completed later that spring down the Kennedy Space Center runway at Cape Canaveral, in anticipation of head-to-head competition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in September. 

Follow the team and racing and research news through the social media buttons above.

Meet the Team

University Faculty Leads

Shankar Sastry PhD, Faculty Director

Dr. S. Shankar Sastry is a distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, with extensive research interests in embedded and cyber-physical systems, robotics, computer vision, and control systems. Throughout his career, Dr. Sastry has held several leadership positions, including 15 years as Dean of Engineering and Faculty Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also directed the Information Technology Office at DARPA and served as Chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department. Dr. Sastry is a prolific author with over 550 technical papers and numerous books, contributing significantly to the fields of control theory and robotics. His accolades include election to the National Academy of Engineering, multiple honorary doctorates, and prestigious awards such as the President of India Gold Medal and the Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council.

Allen Yang, PhD

University of California, Berkeley 

Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR)

Jack Silberman, PhD

University of California,
San Diego

Triton-AI

John Dolan, PhD

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Autonomous Racing (CAR)

Dr. Allen Y. Yang is Executive Director of the FHL Vive Center for Enhanced Reality at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on emerging technologies in AR, VR, and AI, with a particular interest in Computer Vision, Human-Centered User Experience Design, and Autonomy. He has co-founded graduate degree programs in AR/VR, Autonomous Driving, Blockchain and DeFi. Current projects include OpenARK, an open-source AR software developer kit, and Robot Open Autonomous Racing (ROAR).

Dr. Jack Silberman is a lecturer at UC San Diego, where he teaches courses in mechanical and aerospace engineering. With over 20 years of experience in automation and robotics, Silberman has worked on educational robotics, NASA-sponsored mobile field robotics, semiconductor automation, biotech, and medical devices. He is the commercial QA area manager for Canada and Latin America with Abbott Diabetes Care, a global leader in medical devices.

Dr. John M. Dolan is a Principal Systems Scientist at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, where he creates systems and methodologies for robots and humans to collaborate. His research aims to balance maximizing robot autonomy while creating effective human-machine interfaces. Dolan's research includes developing algorithms for autonomous driving, creating tele-supervisory human-robot systems, and studying robot reliability. He has also worked on NASA projects.

Gary Passon

Gary Passon, AI Motorsports Team Principal  

With an honorary appointment at UC Berkeley, AI Racing Tech founder Gary Passon is AI Motorsports Team Principal, serving as the on-the-ground team lead. He brings a technical and engineering background to the team and years of racing experience - from go-kart to amateur road racing to professional road racing to professional oval racing. He helped start, build, and run high-tech companies in Silicon Valley and Southern California before retiring to Maui, where he helped establish the  UH-Maui AVT course that launched the AI Racing Tech team.

Student Leads

Student names link to their LinkedIn profiles if available*

C.K. Wolfe

Simulation Team 

& Team Mgr

Moises Lopez

Planning Team 

Eric Berndt

Machine Learning Team 

Adith Sundram

Controls Team 

Nicholas Preston

Vehicle Dynamics Team 

Kunal Singh

Perception Team 

Kevin Chow

Perception Team 

Tianlun Zhang

Localization Team  

On-Site Support Staff

Wade Koglin

Robert Webber

Zhihao "Cake" Deng

Perception & Media

Remote Support Team

Siddharth Saha

former former Sr. Technical Lead & Planning Team Lead

Haoru Xue

 Controls Team 

Dvij Kalaria 

Controls Team

Chris Lai

Perception Team 

Raymond Song

Telemetry Team 


Wayne Lai

Simulation Team

Nathan Litzinger
Controls Team

Addison Kalanther
Perception / Localization

Faculty & Technical Advisors

Wade Koglin

Robert Webber

Francesco Borelli

PhD

Past Participants

Aman Saraf 

Perception Team Lead

Jad Yahya
Vehicle Dynamics Team Lead

Dominic Nightingale

Controls Team

Maxime Ellerbach

Simulation Team

Jerry Ma 


 Localization

Jazzy Rao

Simulation Team

Virgile Foussereau


Localization

Ashwat Chidambaram  Perception / Simulation

Jose Olivas
Localization 

Team

Christian Falcon

Track Logistics Team

Franco Huang

Perception Team

Alexander Stone

Amadeusz Szymko

Telemetry Team

Jakub Codogni

Telemetry Team

Tomasz Kaproń

Telemetry Team

Tianwei Yue

Telemetry

Team 

Frank Garcia

Telemetry Lead

Xuishi Shen

Vehicle Dynamics & Simulation

Junjie Chen

Vehicle Dynamics & Simulation

 Quang Huynh Vehicle Dynamics

Encheng Liu
Vehicle Dynamics

 Matthew Oh-Hau Sulistijowadi  Planning Team