Rene Mai is a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student whose research explores how humans work together with the amazing autonomous systems we build. Specifically, she focuses on two questions: (1) how do humans react to autonomous systems, and (2) how should we build autonomous systems to work better with humans? She is especially interested in mastering, teaching, and defining the “state of the art” in vehicle performance and driver-vehicle interactions.
Rene comes to RPI from a non-traditional background. She received her Bachelors in Physics from Texas A&M University, then went to the University of Texas at Austin School of Law where she earned her juris doctor. Rene practiced patent litigation for six years before deciding to leave law for a career as an engineer. She encourages anyone considering a graduate degree after working as a professional to “just go for it--the skills that make you a successful professional absolutely translate to success in graduate school.” As an attorney, Rene enjoyed learning about new technologies with every case and explaining them to people from all walks of life. A highlight was teaching a federal judge, who had no background in cellular or digital communications, the difference between digital and analog mathematics in cellular baseband chips. Her contributions were foundational to a ruling for the team’s client. As satisfying as life was as an attorney, Rene began longing for the creative elements of being a scientist. She decided to join a research program where she could flourish as a researcher and a teacher.
Rene chose RPI because we encourage cross-department collaboration, which is essential for her interdisciplinary research. The MANE Department has a strong set of connections with other departments that perform research on human-autonomy teaming, including electrical engineering, computer science, and cognitive science. Rene received the Rensselaer Graduate Fellowship and has never looked back. Her commitment to the RPI community is strong. As a member of the MANE student advisory committee and the Middle States Accreditation Self-Study Committee, Rene actively takes part in improving student programs in the department and across campus. Rene has also been selected for three separate cohorts of the Society of Women Engineers’ international leadership accelerator, Academic Leadership for Women in Engineering. For her commitment and leadership, Rene earned the Rensselaer Founders Award of Excellence in 2024.
Additionally, she has been active and successful beyond the RPI campus. Locally, she is a guest speaker for the New Visions STEM program, designed to introduce local high schoolers to STEM careers. She spent this summer in Houston, Texas, as a Space GNC Intern at Draper Laboratories where she provided navigation analysis to support Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser space plane in its initial flight to orbit. At Draper, Rene developed and modularized fault detection, isolation, and recovery scripts for multiple sensors, and developed and modified software used to verify spacecraft parameters and the overall flight plan. As a NASA Pathways Intern at Ames Research Center in California, she identified key areas for future NASA research on LLM development, continued human-autonomy teaming research in the area of disaster recovery and complex human-autonomy teaming scenarios, and built an LLM training and evaluation pipeline for future aviation-specific LLM development. The quality and caliber of her work has been recognized at the national level by the National Defense Science and Engineering Fellowship program (Honorable Mention), the Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation Scholarship program (finalist), and the Modeling, Estimation, and Controls Conference Best Student Research Award (finalist). Currently supported by the Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation, and Training Fellowship, Rene was also previously named an NSF Cyber-Physical Human Systems Fellow and a Boeing Summer Fellow. In fact, Rene has earned more than ½ dozen other prestigious awards not mentioned here. Her research and professional achievements are such that she recently received the highly selective nomination from Rensselaer, and is now a finalist, for the coveted Schmidt Science Fellowship program. Yet, when requested for information for this article, Rene neglected to discuss any of those honors as she is focused on the research and mentoring activities at the heart of her program.
Rene spends her free time practicing Shotokan Karate, and as a Nidan (second degree black belt) teaching and mentoring other students. Her husband and lab mates also enjoy the benefits of her love for baking.
