María Santos is a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, where she works with Dr. Naomi Leonard. Her research focuses on the modeling, analysis, and implementation of scalable algorithms for multi-robot systems to accomplish complex tasks through local interactions. She's particularly interested in problems involving heterogeneous capabilities or strategies at the agent level, as well as the execution of dynamic or undefined tasks. To this end, she utilizes concepts from control theory, robotics, optimization, and machine learning.

She received her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2020, advised by Dr. Magnus Egerstedt. Her doctoral research was partially supported by a fellowship from La Caixa Foundation. Prior to that, she completed a M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Fulbright scholar in 2016 and a B.S/M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Vigo in 2013, for which she was awarded Outstanding Graduate of the Year (Premio Fin de Carrera).

When she's not in the lab, you can find her playing the violin with friends, singing, dancing to Latin music, or practicing yoga.