Elham Daneshmand

PhD candidate in Computer Science, McGill University & Mila · Montreal, Canada · elham.daneshmand@mila.quebec

Education

2021 – 2027 Ph.D. in Computer Science, McGill University and Mila (expected 2027). GPA 4.00. Advisors: Glen Berseth and Hsiu-Chin Lin.
2015 – 2021 B.Sc. in Computer Science, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Thesis: "Bipedal Walking Control using Variable Horizon MPC", supervised at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Jun – Nov 2025 Visiting Researcher, Technical University of Munich, Germany, supported by Majid Khadiv.
Proposed SLowRL and fine-tuned a jumping policy on a physical Unitree Go2; developed SafeExplorer.
2019 – 2021 Robotics Researcher and Research Intern, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany.
Developed impedance and centroidal controllers for a torque-controlled biped, deployed variable-horizon MPC on the real biped Bolt (code), and contributed to actuator model identification for a one-legged robot.

E. Daneshmand, M. Khadiv, G. Berseth, H.-C. Lin. SafeExplorer: An Unbiased Mixed-Policy Gradient for Reinforcement Learning with Recovery Interventions. Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2026 (accepted).
The Koala Science team and five top-ranked competition participants, including E. Daneshmand. Koala Science: A Platform for AI Reviewers in the Wild. NeurIPS 2026 Workshop on AI-Native Academia (accepted).
E. Daneshmand, S. Omar, G. Berseth, M. Khadiv, H.-C. Lin. SLowRL: Safe Low-Rank Adaptation Reinforcement Learning for Locomotion. Under review, IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2026; workshop poster, RLC 2026.
E. Daneshmand, M. Khadiv, F. Grimminger, L. Righetti. Variable Horizon MPC with Swing Foot Dynamics for Bipedal Walking Control. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2021; presented at ICRA 2021.
M. Ghoddousi Boroujeni*, E. Daneshmand*, L. Righetti, M. Khadiv. A Unified Framework for Walking and Running of Bipedal Robots. International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2021. (*equal contribution)

2026 Excellence Scholarship, Women in AI, awarded by Mila, $24,000
2024 Kanako Miura Award, travel support for Humanoids, Nancy, France
2023 – 2026 FRQNT Doctoral Scholarship, $100,000
2023 RBC Borealis Fellowship, $10,000, awarded to 10 students across Canada
2022 2nd Place, Best Poster Award, McGill School of Computer Science 50th Anniversary
2022 ETH Zurich Travel Grant, awarded by ETH RobotX
2021 Inclusion@RSS Fellowship, Robotics: Science and Systems
2018 3rd Place, Asia-Pacific RoboCup, Virtual Rescue League (team leader), Kish, Iran
2018 3rd Place, FIRA Cup, Robo Challenge and SimuroSot leagues, Taichung, Taiwan
2018 2nd Place, Iran Open Robotics, Rescue CoSpace League (mentor), Tehran
2017 Super Team 2nd Place, Asia-Pacific RoboCup, Rescue CoSpace League (mentor), Bangkok
2016 2nd Place, Amirkabir International Collegiate Programming Contest; selected for the ACM ICPC Asia Regional Contest
2015 Ranked 689th of over 181,000 in Iran's National University Entrance Exam (top 0.4%)
2013, 2014 Top 80, Iranian National Olympiad in Informatics
2013 Super Team 2nd Place, International RoboCup, Soccer Lightweight League, Eindhoven
2013 1st Place, Iran Open Robotics, Soccer Lightweight League, Tehran

Talks
- Polytechnique Montréal Order of the White Rose visit to Mila, 2026
- Journées de l'Optimisation (JOPT), Montreal, 2022
- International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2021
Teaching Assistant, McGill University (2021 – 2024)
- Applied Machine Learning (Head TA)
- Applied Robotics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Fundamentals of Software Development
Teaching Assistant, Montreal Robotics Summer School (2022, 2023)
Mentor: supervised 9 undergraduate students and interns building and programming a quadruped robot, McGill University (2022 – present)
Teaching Assistant, Cross-Atlantic RoboArt Hackathon (2022)
Teaching Assistant, Amirkabir University of Technology (2017)
- Data Structures and Algorithms
- Design and Analysis of Algorithms
Lecturer, junior robotics teams, Farzanegan high schools (NODET), Tehran (2016 – 2019)
Reviewer
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2026
- IROS, 2026
- IEEE-RAS Humanoids, 2022, 2023, 2024
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022, 2023
- CRV, 2023
- LORM, 2022
Judge, McHacks Hackathon Challenge (2026)
Volunteer
- Women at Mila, 2024 – present
- Conference on Robots and Vision (CRV), 2023
- CS-CAN, 2023
Organizer
- Introduction to Computer Science workshop for high school students, 2019
- ACM programming competition for students, 2018
- Student programming competition, 2018
Technical Committee member, FarzCup Robotics Competition (2016 – 2019)