PHONE THIHA KYAW

https://www.phonethk.com



phone.thiha@robotics.utias.utoronto.ca | Curriculum Vitae, 18

August 2026

EDUCATION

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada January 2026 - Present

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Robotics

Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Kelly

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada January 2025 - January 2026

Master of Applied Science (MASc) in Aerospace Science and Engineering

• Transferred to PhD program prior to Master’s completion

University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom May 2022 - May 2023

Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) with Honours in Electronic Engineering First Class Honours

Thesis Title: A Novel Any-angle Path Planning Algorithm

on Non-uniform Grid Maps

Supervisor: Prof. Thet Naing Oo

Yangon Technological University, Yangon, Myanmar December 2015 - December 2021

Mechatronics Engineering

Supervisor: Prof. Theint Theint Thu

TEACHING AND VOLUNTEERING

University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies January 2026 - April 2026

Teaching Assistant, Robot Motion Planning (AER1516H) Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Kelly

Yangon Technological University January 2021 - December 2021

Teaching Assistant, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lab Supervisor: Prof. Theint Theint Thu

• Instructor of AI & Computer Vision (McE-51069) online course

• Designed and delivered a comprehensive course curriculum focused on reinforcement learning

Yangon Technological University July 2017 - June 2018

President, Cluster of Science and Technology

• Served as President of the student club “Cluster of Science and Technology (CST)”

• Led the team for one year, overseeing activities aimed at keeping students updated on the latest develop-

ments in science and technology

• Contributed to the promotion of science and technology awareness within the university community, en-

hancing engagement and knowledge sharing

Lae Lar Technology Co., Ltd March 2018 - March 2020

Instructor

• Designed and developed online courses on Robot Operating System (ROS) and Python programming

language, empowering Myanmar students to stay updated with the latest trends in robotics

RESEARCH AND WORK EXPERIENCE

University of Toronto January 2025 - Present

Graduate Research Student, STARS Laboratory Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Kelly

Dyson, Singapore August 2024 - January 2025

Senior Software Engineer, Robotics

• Designed and maintained the high-level software stack and scalable distributed system architectures

• Drove a culture of software quality and promoted a collaborative engineering culture across the team

LionsBot International Pte Ltd, Singapore February 2022 - July 2024

Software Engineer, Autonomy

• Led the development and strategic planning of key modules and infrastructure for the perception stack

• Provided leadership in reviewing, guiding, and training the team to improve overall code quality and

performance

• Led the initiative to set up internal automated testing and tooling infrastructure to optimize development

processes

• Contributed to the development of multiple patent-pending technologies

Singapore University of Technology and Design October 2019 - December 2020

Research Intern, ROAR Lab Supervisor: Prof. Mohan Rajesh Elara

• Published research articles on robotics, path planning, and computer vision

• Developed autonomy systems for various indoor and outdoor reconﬁgurable robots, including stair-climbing

and wall-climbing robots

HONORS, AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Best Presenter Award 2022

LionsBot International Pte Ltd, Singapore

Senior Championship Award 2018

Myanmar STEM Competition

Certiﬁcate of Honor Award 2017

Ministry of Education, Myanmar

• Recognition for achieving world rank 6th in the First Global Robotics Competition, 2017

Certiﬁcate of Excellence Award 2017

International FIRST Committee Association

• Recognition for outstanding representation of Team Myanmar and excellence in the Inaugural 2017 FIRST

Global Challenge in Washington, DC

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Served/ing as a reviewer for

• Journals

– International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)

– IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)

– IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE)

• Conferences

– IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

INVITED TALKS/WORKSHOPS

Mar. 2026 Invited talk, MakerFest’26, Myanmar.

Mar. 2024 “Robotics TechTalk”, Invited talk, American Center Yangon, Myanmar.

Dec. 2019 “Mobile Robot Kinematics”, Invited workshop, Laboratory of Robotics and AI

(LORA), Yangon Technological University, Myanmar.

Jul. 2019 “Engineering and Robotics”, Invited talk, Gakken Classroom Education Seminar,

Myanmar.

Feb. 2019 “Python Programming for beginners”, Invited workshop, MakerFest Myanmar.

Jul. 2018 “Introduction to Python Programming”, Invited workshop, Barcamp TU Hinthada,

Myanmar.

NANODEGREES

Udacity C++ Nanodegree Program Graduated February 2021

Curriculum: OOP, Memory Management, Concurrency

Udacity Sensor Fusion Nanodegree Program Graduated March 2020

Curriculum: Lidar, Radar, Camera, Kalman Filters

SKILLS

Spoken Languages: English (Fluent), Burmese (Native)

Programming Languages: C++, Python, Matlab, Javascript

Tools and Technologies: ROS/ROS2, DDS, Qt, CMake, LATEX, Bash/Shell, Linux, Git, Jira, Conﬂuence

PUBLICATIONS

Phone Thiha Kyaw and Jonathan Kelly, Contact Modes Are Strata: What Geometric Structure Buys in

Discrete-Continuous Planning, https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.15541, 2026 [Link].

Jonathan Kelly, Phone Thiha Kyaw and Mattew Giamou, Lost in Time? Continuous Symmetry and Iden-

tiﬁability in Aided Inertial Navigation with Unknown Measurement Delays, arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.03699,

2026 [Link].

Miguel Angel Rogel Garcia, Phone Thiha Kyaw and Jonathan Kelly, Exploring the Intrinsic Geometry of

Diﬀusion Models with Constrained Inverse Kinematics, In Proceedings of the Robotics: Science and Systems

(RSS) 2026 Workshop on Diﬀusion for Robot Learning, Sydney, Australia, 2026 [Link].

Phone Thiha Kyaw and Jonathan Kelly, Direct Informed Sampling on Riemannian Manifolds via Loewner

Order Lower Bounds, arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.02879, 2026 [Link].

Phone Thiha Kyaw and Jonathan Kelly, Geometry-Aware Sampling-Based Motion Planning on Rieman-

nian Manifolds, Proceedings of the 17th World Symposium on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics

(WAFR), 2026 [Link].

Phone Thiha Kyaw, Anh Vu Le, Mohan Rajesh Elara and Jonathan Kelly, Greedy heuristics for sampling-

based motion planning in high-dimensional state spaces, arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.03411, 2025 [Link].

Phone Thiha Kyaw, Anh Vu Le, Prabakaran Veerajagadheswar, Mohan Rajesh Elara, Theint Theint Thu,

Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan, Phan Van Duc and Minh Bui Vu, Energy-eﬃcient path planning of reconﬁgurable

robots in complex environments, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2022 [Link].

Phone Thiha Kyaw, Aung Paing, Theint Theint Thu, Rajesh Elara Mohan, Anh Vu Le and Prabakaran

Veerajagadheswar, Coverage path planning for decomposition reconﬁgurable grid-maps using deep reinforce-

ment learning based travelling salesman problem, IEEE Access, 2020 [Link].

Anh Vu Le, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Rajesh Elara Mohan, Sai Htet Moe Swe, Ashiwin Rajendran, Kamalesh

Boopathi and Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan, Autonomous ﬂoor and staircase cleaning framework by reconﬁgurable

sTetro robot with perception sensors, Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, 2021.

Anh Vu Le, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Prabakaran Veerajagadheswar, MA Viraj J Muthugala, Mohan Rajesh

Elara, Madhu Kumar and Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan, Reinforcement learning-based optimal complete water-

blasting for autonomous ship hull corrosion cleaning system, Ocean Engineering, 2021.

Prabakaran Veerajagadheswar, Anh Vu Le, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Mohan Rajesh Elara and Aung Paing, An

Autonomous Descending-Stair Cleaning Robot with RGB-D based Detection, Approaching, and Area coverage

Process, 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022.

Veerajagadheswar Prabakaran, Anh Vu Le, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Prathap Kandasamy, Aung Paing and Ra-

jesh Elara Mohan, sTetro-D: A deep learning based autonomous descending-stair cleaning robot, Engineering

Applications of Artiﬁcial Intelligence, 2023.

Anh Vu Le, Prabakaran Veerajagadheswar, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Mohan Rajesh Elara and Nguyen Huu

Khanh Nhan, Coverage path planning using reinforcement learning-based TSP for hTetran—A polyabolo-

inspired self-reconﬁgurable tiling robot, Sensors, 2021.

Anh Vu Le, Prabakaran Veerajagadheswar, Phone Thiha Kyaw, MA Viraj J Muthugala, Mohan Rajesh

Elara, Madhu Kuma and Nguyen Huu Khanh Nhan, Towards optimal hydro-blasting in reconﬁgurable climbing

system for corroded ship hull cleaning and maintenance, Expert Systems with Applications, 2021.

Anh Vu Le, Rizuwana Parween, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Rajesh Elara Mohan, Tran Hoang Quang Minh

and Charan Satya Chandra Sairam Borusu, Reinforcement learning-based energy-aware area coverage for

reconﬁgurable hRombo tiling robot, IEEE Access, 2020.

Veerajagadheswar Prabakaran, Anh Vu Le, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Rajesh Elara Mohan, Prathap Kandasamy,

Tan Nhat Nguyen and Madhukumar Kannan, Hornbill: A self-evaluating hydro-blasting reconﬁgurable robot

for ship hull maintenance, IEEE Access, 2020.

PATENTS

Dylan Terntzer Ng, Phone Thiha Kyaw, Yee Sien Lee, Sunardi Tay and Mohan Rajesh Elara, A method

and a system for updating a static map of an environment, WO2025084977, 2025 [Link].