PHONE THIHA KYAW

https://www.phonethk.com



phone.thiha@robotics.utias.utoronto.ca | Curriculum Vitae, 7

th

October 2026

EDUCATION

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

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Robotics

Supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Kelly

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

RESEARCH AND WORK EXPERIENCE

dConstruct Robotics, Singapore March 2026 - Present

Research Engineer, Autonomy

University of Toronto, Canada January 2025 - Present

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

• 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

• 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

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

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, Thomas Cohn, Miguel Angel Rogel Garcia and Jonathan Kelly, Induced Riemannian

Metrics for Motion Planning with Constraints, arXiv preprint arXiv:2609.25695, 2026 [Link].

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

in Discrete-Continuous Planning, In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent

Robots and Systems (IROS) 2026 Workshop on Geometric-Aware Representations in Robotics, 2026 [Link].

Jonathan Kelly, Phone Thiha Kyaw and Matthew Giamou, Lost in Time? Continuous Symmetry and

Order Lower Bounds, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 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, Autonomous Robots, 2026 [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].

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

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.

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].