Luke Shimanuki

Experience

Aurora Innovation

Senior SWE / Tech Lead (Behavior ML)

2022–present

Led team of 7 ML engineers to develop & deploy forecasting models, reducing error by 20% on targeted scenarios, resolving 100+ behavioral test failures across 7 safety-critical failure modes, & enabling driverless operations that achieved 100K+ incident-free miles.
Recognized by senior leadership for urgently resolving intersection behavior deficiencies blocking 2 investor showcases central to $800M+ funding round & manufacturing partnership agreement.
Mentored 3 ML engineers, & developed framework accelerating integration of separate model improvements from 1 week to 2 days, enabling the team to double in size while maintaining development velocity.

Magna Electronics (formerly Optimus Ride)

SDE II → Senior SDE (Motion Planning)

2020–2022

Led 3 engineers to develop probabilistic uncertainty quantification framework & risk-aware motion planner, enabling safe autonomous navigation through contested intersections.
Led cross-functional initiative to redesign prediction-planning interface incorporating probabilistic uncertainty propagation, facilitating risk-aware planning across the autonomous driving stack.
Formulated technical requirements & algorithmic specifications for 2 ADAS features following ISO 26262 functional safety standards, resulting in 1 patent filing.

Cruise Automation

Intern (Prediction)

Summer 2018

Improved forecast dynamic feasibility & intersection reasoning, tripling passing test cases & substantially reducing intersection disengagements.

Optimus Ride (Self-driving)

SWE Intern (Perception)

Summer 2017

Designed & implemented end-to-end perception pipeline from object detection through tracking & forecasting, establishing architecture that integrated with motion planning system.

RightHand Robotics (Robotic Grasping)

Intern (Machine Learning / Vision)

January 2017

Designed & trained CNN-based grasp prediction model from RGB-D input, improving pick success rate on cluttered bin-packing scenarios.

Tanius Technology (Prop Trading)

Developer (ML Modeling)

2015–2016

Built end-to-end ML system for algorithmic trading: data ingestion, model training, & backtesting infrastructure.

Education & Research Publications

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | CSAIL Learning & Intelligent Systems

2016–2020

M.Eng Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (AI Concentration), GPA 5.0 (out of 5.0)

S.B. Computer Science + Brain & Cognitive Science, GPA 4.9 (out of 5.0), 5.0 within CS major

B. Axelrod, L. Shimanuki**, "Efficient Motion Planning under Obstacle Uncertainty with Local Dependencies"	WAFR 2022
L. Shimanuki, B. Axelrod, "Hardness of Motion Planning with Obstacle Uncertainty in 2 Dimensions"	IJRR 2021
B. Kim, L. Shimanuki**, et al., "Representation, learning, and planning algorithms for geometric task and motion planning"	IJRR 2021
B. Kim, L. Shimanuki**, "Learning value functions with relational state representations for guiding task-and-motion planning"	CoRL 2019
L. Shimanuki, B. Axelrod, "Hardness of Motion Planning with Obstacle Uncertainty in 3 Dimensions"	WAFR 2018

* indicates equal contribution

Activities

Site Manager

Food for Free COVID-19 Relief Program

2020

Directed team of 12 volunteers for packing & delivering groceries to ~300 households weekly.

Program Director, Head Webmaster

MIT Educational Studies Program

2017–2020

Directed educational programs reaching ~3000 MS/HS students, with ~1000 classes taught by ~500 teachers, & run by ~100 volunteers. Mentored 5 future program directors. Maintained website used by ~5000 students.

Software Lead

AVBotz

2012–2016

Led the software team (~12 members) for fully-autonomous submarine for manipulating objects, aiming & shooting torpedoes, & navigating around obstacles. International finalist (7th Place) at RoboSub 2015.

Co-President, HPMS Branch Director

ACE Coding

2013–2016

Managed ~16 volunteers to teach weekly programming lessons to ~100 middle school students annually. Organized full-day event attracting ~300 students. Taught machine vision & ML workshops.

Awards

USACO PlatinumIntel STS 2016 SemifinalistEagle ScoutMIT Battlecode 2018 Finalist

Projects

C++	Low latency audio streaming to enable remote musicians to play in-sync with under 30ms latency

Python

Musical autocomplete to assist chord & melody composition

Python

Open-source window manager extension enabling grid layout

C	Web browser using Chromium's rendering engine with configurable vi-like key bindings

C	C compiler to convert C code to x86 assembly

Java	Neural network AI for a multiplayer platformer fighting game

n/a	Inflatable Sailboat: DIY spritsail rigged to an inflatable raft