Hi, I'm Ishaan!

I’m an Artificial Intelligence student at MIT and a researcher at CSAIL, advised by Prof. Daniela Rus, Prof. Yilun Du, and Prof. Antonio Torralba. My research lies at the intersection of robotics and machine learning, focusing on VLA fine-tuning in simulation and video world models.

I also co-lead the MIT Undergraduate Robotics Reading Group and serve as Vice President of the MIT Sloan Robotics Club. Outside robotics, I enjoy producing electronic music, playing racket sports, and skiing.

Recent Highlights

🤖 2026: Began working with Haoyu Xiong on long-horizon world models for robotics, co-advised by Antonio Torralba (MIT CSAIL) and Yilun Du (Harvard).
🌐 2026: Selected as VP of the MIT Sloan Robotics Club.
🤖 2025: Began working with Makram Chahine on gradient-optimized VLA fine-tuning in simulation, advised by Daniela Rus (MIT CSAIL).
🏆 2025: Quantum Photonics and AI Group project selected to advance to the next DARPA program phase.
📄 2024: Lead-author paper accepted at the 12th Beam Telescopes and Test Beams Workshop (BTTB).

Publications

Also available on my Google Scholar profile.

A Radially and Rotationally Adjustable Magnetic Mangle for High Energy Particle Beams

Ishaan Vohra, Isabella Vesely, Peter Morand, Aubrey Zhang, William Lu, William Soh, Achyuta Rajaram, Daniel Jeon

Oral • 12th Beam Telescopes and Test Beams Workshop (BTTB), 2024

Paper Slides

NuSmear: Fast Simulation of Energy Smearing and Angular Smearing for Neutrino-Nucleon Scattering Events in the GENIE Event Generator

Ishaan Vohra

Oral • 14th Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics (CIPANP), 2022

Paper Slides

Projects

Robot Policy Evaluation Harness in Sim, Built in <6 Hours

Ishaan Vohra

2026

Proof-of-concept evaluation harness for robot policies under visual domain randomization; supports multiple robot embodiments and MuJoCo-based benchmarks.

Code

Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) for Automated Trimming of Silicon Microring Resonators

Ishaan Vohra, Chao Luan

Quantum Photonics and AI Group, MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, 2025

Developed parallelized holographic laser trimming systems for post-fab tuning of photonic integrated circuits (PICs).

Code

Radio-frequency Matrix-Vector Multiplication: An Analog Computing Proof of Concept

Fadi Farag, Dominic Stewart-Guido, Ishaan Vohra

MIT 6.2300 (Electromagnetic Waves and Applications) Final Project, 2025

A hardware proof-of-concept performing matrix-vector multiplication in the radio-frequency domain for compact, low-latency analog computing.

Report Slides

Proton-Induced Gamma Ray Emission Cross Sections for a 27-Al Target

Hwang Junsang, Gao Layun, Ishaan Vohra, Kikuchi Yuta

RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science (RNC), Summer Research Project, 2023

Measured and simulated proton-induced gamma-ray emission cross sections on an aluminum-27 target, benchmarking reaction rates against theory.

Slides

Computational Neutrino Flux Optimization for Bubble Chamber at Fermilab's Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE)

Ishaan Vohra

Fermilab Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), Summer Research Project, 2023

Optimized the underground placement of DUNE's Modern Modular Bubble Chamber using off-axis neutrino flux simulations in Geant4.

Code

Blog

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May 13, 2026

Spectral Optimization for Neural Networks: Muon and the Newton-Schulz Iteration

From Adam's per-coordinate rescaling to Muon's spectral balancing: how the Newton-Schulz iteration orthogonalizes momentum, the Gram-Newton-Schulz refinement, and experiments comparing optimizers.