Xiaomin Lin profile photo

Xiaomin Lin

Assistant Professor
University of South Florida
Electrical Engineering
Bellini College of AI, Cybersecurity and Computing (Affiliated)
Institute for AI + X (Researcher)
Director, ERA Lab
[LinkedIn] [Google Scholar] [cv]
[ResearchGate] [dblp] [ORCID]

🔥 About Me

I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of South Florida, with an affiliated appointment in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing (Computer Science) and a researcher appointment in the Institute for Artificial Intelligence + X. My work spans edge AI, perception-enabled robotics, and intelligent systems for challenging environments, including underwater, agricultural, and healthcare domains.

I direct the ERA Lab (Embodied Robotics and Autonomy), which focuses on robotics, multimodal perception, and AI for challenging environments.

🌱🌟 I am actively recruiting PhD students to join my lab starting Spring 2027 and Fall 2027. I also welcome collaboration in robotics, AI, edge computing, and medical or underwater applications.

📬 If you are interested, please fill out the form after reading my Research Statement pdf. Ideally, I am looking for experienced students with a top-tier publication and an MS degree in related fields, and a strong background in robotics, AI, or embedded systems. Only if you are at USF, feel free to email me with your CV, transcripts, and a brief statement of research interests and career goals. Unfortunately, I cannot respond to all inquiries, especially those without sufficient information.

I received my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, advised by Prof. Yiannis Aloimonos. My research lies at the intersection of robotics and perception, with emphasis on autonomous underwater systems. I build frameworks for autonomous underwater vehicles to detect and map marine objects such as oyster beds and coral reefs using real and synthetic data, simulation-based methods, and multimodal sensing.

Before joining USF, I was a postdoctoral researcher with the Energy Efficient High Performance Computing Lab (EEHPC) at Johns Hopkins University, directed by Dr. Tinoosh Mohsenin, where I was also an Institute for Assured Autonomy Postdoctoral Fellow. There I expanded my focus to integrating large language models with knowledge graphs for advanced reasoning and decision making, and to building efficient algorithms and frameworks for deployment on edge devices and robots.

Current Research Areas

  • Multimodal Sensing for General Robotics
  • Synthetic Data Generation and Digital Twin
  • Edge AI for Robotics and Healthcare
  • Long Term Autonomous Environmental Monitoring for Restoration and Aquaculture
  • Large Language Models for Robotics Reasoning

🤝 Collaboration

I collaborate widely across marine robotics and AI, including Prof. Shahriar Negahdaripour Miami, Prof. Ioannis Rekleitis Delaware, Prof. Leonardo Bobadilla Florida International University, Dr. Nare Karapetyan WHOI, Dr. Marios Xanthidis SINTEF Ocean, Dr. Yewei Huang Dartmouth College, and Prof. Jane Shin Florida.

I also work with collaborators across biology, computing, and robotics such as Dr. Isla Duporge Princeton, Prof. Kevin Boswell FIU, and Prof. Dongyi Wang Arkansas.

In Maryland, I have collaborated with Prof. Matthew Gray UMCES, Prof. Miao Yu, Prof. Nikhil Chopra.

At the 2024 Autonomous Systems Bootcamp, I led a team from eight institutions and companies, resulting in a joint publication on the Odyssee project [Odyssee] as lead and corresponding author.

🔥 News

  • 2026.6 Served as an NSF panel reviewer for the Foundations of Core Research in AI/ML program.
  • 2026.6 Session Chair, Large Language Model Session 1A, PAKDD 2026, where Multi-RAG was presented.
  • 2026.5 Session Chair for Imaging and Vision I and Sonar Imaging at OCEANS 2026, Sanya.
  • 2026.5.1 Faculty presentation and panel discussion at the 2nd Bellini College REU Symposium, USF.
  • 2026.4.6 Hosted ERA Lab demos at the USF Engineering Expo.
  • 2026.3 Served on the PhD dissertation committee for Wenwei Zhao at USF.
  • 2026 WaterGen accepted to ECCV 2026, and to the 3rd SynData4CV workshop at CVPR 2026.
  • 2026 Three papers accepted to IROS 2026: Post-Fusion BEV Feature Stabilization, APPLV, and CORAL.
  • 2026 RAZOR accepted to the CVPR 2026 Findings Track; LADBench to ICDL 2026; G-Drift MIA to ICPR 2026; CatRAG to IJCNN 2026.
  • 2026 Associate Editor for IROS 2026; Organizing Committee for the 5th MaCVi Workshop and Program Committee for SENSE, both at WACV 2027.
  • 2026.1 Launched a DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory CRADA on Efficient Multimodal Learning as technical point of contact.
  • 2026.1 Teaching EEL 4935/6935 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition; also serving as Faculty Advisor for the IEEE RAS Student Branch Chapter at USF.
  • 2025.12 HiCL accepted to AAAI 2026 and Multi-RAG to PAKDD 2026.
  • 2025.11.10 Automated rhinoceros detection in satellite imagery published in Scientific Reports, with coverage in Maryland Today and USF World.
  • 2025.10 BitMedViT presented at ICCAD 2025 and ViewActive at IROS 2025.
  • 2025.10.3 Department seminar, "From Human Cognition to Ocean", USF Electrical Engineering.
  • 2025.9 OysterBot presented at OCEANS 2025, Great Lakes.
  • 2025.9.21 Talk at Rutgers University New Brunswick, AI for Health workshop.
  • 2025.8.7 Officially joined University of South Florida as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering.
  • 2025.5.21 Honored by the Institute for Systems Research for PhD achievements and contributions to robotics and underwater ecosystem monitoring.
  • 2025.5.19 to 2025.5.24 Attending ICRA 2025.
  • 2025.5.5 Talk at University of Central Florida in Computer Science and in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
  • 2025.4.2 Talk in AI for Engineering and Scientific Discoveries at the 2025 AAAI Spring Symposium Series.
  • 2025.2.27 Talk at University of South Florida in Electrical Engineering.
  • 2025.2.24 Presentation at Virginia Tech in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering.
  • 2025.2.21 Talk at The Catholic University of America in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
  • 2025.2.19 Talk at UMBC in EECS.
  • 2025.1 Program Committee for AAAI 2025 Spring Symposium Series Gen AI at Edge.
  • 2024.12 Joined EEHPC Lab at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Tinoosh Mohsenin.
  • 2024.10 Award for best control framework in autonomous navigation and control at the IROS workshop, Abu Dhabi.
  • 2023.05 Best Poster Award at the Maryland Robotics Center Research Symposium.

💰 Funding

DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) CRADA — Efficient Multimodal Learning (ARL CRADA 22-0034-J003)
Technical point of contact, effective January 2026. Led the joint work statement and research plan for efficient multimodal learning in edge-deployed agentic systems, spanning retrieval-augmented generation and model efficiency, with joint integration across USF and ARL teams.

Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) STTR Phase II — Mobile Software Tool for Counting Small Objects Using Computer Vision and Machine Learning
Primary contributor, 2020–2021. Proposed the original idea, led the preliminary project, authored the proposal, and delivered the final project presentation.

🎓 Teaching

  • EEL 4935/6935: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, USF — Instructor, Spring 2026
  • CMSC 426: Computer Vision, UMD — Teaching Assistant, Fall 2020
  • ENEE 350: Computer Organization, UMD — Teaching Assistant, 2019–2021
  • ENEE 303(H): Analog and Digital Electronics, UMD — Teaching Assistant, Fall 2019
  • ENEE 408I: Capstone Design Project, UMD — Teaching Assistant, Fall 2018, 2019
  • ENEE 380: Electromagnetic Theory, UMD — Teaching Assistant, Fall 2018

👥 ERA Lab

PhD students: Zhenqi Wu, Utkarsh Grover, Mingyang Mao, Trung Dong, Sheimy Paz Serpa, Mohammed Ibrahim M

MS students: Lara Radovanovic, Tanvir Ibrahim, Urja Panta, Seyoung Kan

Undergraduate researchers: Sahasra Kondapalli, Poyraz An, Trung Nhan Ngo, Bao Dinh, Minh Duong Nguyen, Mohamed Fouad

Affiliated students: Aadi Palnitkar Maryland, Ravi Ranjan FIU, Yuanjie Lu George Mason, Yisheng Zhang Maryland, Yangsheng Xu Maryland

📰 In the News

Recognition

ISR Honors 2025 Graduate Achievements · May 2025
University of Maryland, College Park 🌐

Postdoctoral Fellow · Jan 2025 to Aug 2025
Institute for Assured Autonomy, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University 🌐

Best Paper Award · Oct 2024
Autonomous Robotic Systems in Aquaculture Workshop, Abu Dhabi, IROS 🌐

Best Poster Award · May 2023
Maryland Robotics Center (MRC) Research Symposium 🌐

Image Segmentation Challenge, Third Place · Dec 2020
Northrop Grumman

Service

Contact

Xiaomin Lin
xlin2@usf.edu
+1-813-974-3207
Office: University of South Florida, Tampa, FL