Dong Ho Lee

Multi-agent systems, optimization, games, and learning.

Austin, TX

I am a Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where I work with Professor David Fridovich-Keil in the Control & Learning for Autonomous Robotics (CLeAR) Lab. I joined UT Austin in August 2023 and expect to graduate in May 2028.

My research combines multi-agent systems, optimization, game theory, and learning. My Ph.D. work focuses on Games of Ordered Preference (GOOP), which model strategic interactions among agents with hierarchical objectives. These models describe situations where agents have conflicting goals and must give some objectives priority over others.

I focus on on making these games practical to solve for real-time receding-horizon control. I develop compact reformulations that remove unnecessary variables and constraints, and build a customized Newton solver for these reformulations. My goal is to reduce the computational burden of real-time planning and control for interacting agents.

Working with industry

I am looking for research internship opportunities in 2027 and am also interested in future full-time roles. I can contribute to:

  • Game-theoretic planning: models of strategic interaction with conflicting goals and ordered priorities.
  • Numerical optimization: compact reformulations and a Newton solver for hierarchical problems.
  • Multi-agent planning and control: receding-horizon methods and learning-based routing under resource constraints.

My technical toolkit includes Python, Julia, C/C++, MATLAB, and Gurobi. I am fluent in English and a native Korean speaker.

Background

Before UT Austin, I was a research assistant at the Strategic Aerospace Initiative, KAIST (September 2020–July 2023), working with Professor Jaemyung Ahn on reinforcement learning for multi-UAV routing and deep learning for aerodynamic prediction. I earned my M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in August 2022 and B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in February 2017, both at KAIST. I graduated Magna cum laude with my B.S.

From June 2017 to May 2020, I served as a First Lieutenant and Research Officer at the Agency for Defense Development in South Korea. My work focused on multi-UAV mission planning and simulation. Earlier, I worked on a self-configuring modular drone as an undergraduate research intern in KAIST’s Unmanned Systems Research Group.