PhD Student
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Office: 31-219M
rountree@mit.edu

Josh Rountree is a PhD student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a member of the Interactive Robotics Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Josh’s research goal is to enable human-robot teams to seamlessly partner robots with people in dynamic, uncertain, and high-risk environments. He believes that our robots will work best if they work well with us.

He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot School where he led the first flight test of AI agents trained in simulation using deep reinforcement learning on a high-performance aircraft (F-16) in the real world performing routing and computer vision tasks. Following Test Pilot School, he was the chief test pilot leading multi-disciplinary teams from government and industry for test, development, and experimentation efforts in the Air Force's Skyborg Vanguard program evaluating teaming of autonomous and piloted aircraft. Prior to joining MIT, he led a collaboration between MIT, Lincoln Laboratory, and the Air Force leading to live flight of AI agents trained in simulation to autonomously fly an experimental F-16 with the DARPA Air Combat Evolution program. This work was recognized as a 2023 Collier Trophy finalist alongside the rest of the DARPA Air Combat Evolution team.