Sydney Dolan

Welcome to my website! My name is Sydney Dolan. I recently completed my PhD under the supervision of  Professor Hamsa Balakrishnan in DINAMo in the AeroAstro Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My doctoral area of expertise is in the development of autonomous collision avoidance and coordination algorithms for multi-agent systems like satellites. 

I presently work as a postdoc at Technical University of Munich where I work on neuromorphic computer vision algorithms for space situational awareness. My research interests include: multi-agent reinforcement learning, multi-agent distributed control, graph-theoretic multi-agent coordination, and spacecraft perception and pose estimation. I bring a unique perspective to machine learning research, motivated by the challenging control, coordination, perception, and resource allocation problems that exist in the space industry. My work is interdisciplinary, spanning space systems, planetary science, and machine learning fields, and has led to publications in top machine learning and space venues including AAMAS, ICML and AGU.

Learn More About My Research Projects!

Sun-E: Dataset and Benchmark for Event-Based Sun Sensing

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Satellite Proximity Operations

Projects of My Supervised Students

Lossless Event Compression

Student: Antonio Junco de Haas

TUM, Masters Thesis, Fall 2025

SatDataGen – python package for satellite sensor tasking

Student: Adina Golden

MIT, MEng, Fall 2023

Latest News

  • [December 2025] Huge congratulations to my bachelor’s student, Gordon Hahmeyer, for defending his bachelor’s thesis. His topic was on event camera slewing strategies. A copy of his thesis is available here: (link).
  • [December 2025] I was interviewed by TUM about my experience on the analog astronaut mission! You can read the profile here: (link)
  • [November 2025] I was selected to be a Crew Engineer on a Analog Astronaut mission at the Mars Desert Research Station as part of a study being done by University of Colorado Boulder! I will be part of Crew 323, you can follow updates here: (link)
  • [October 2025] My recent work on spectral analysis for graph transformer interpretability was accepted to Learning on Graphs conference! This work was a collaboration with Professor Max Li and Sukhyeon Lim fom University of Michigan. The preprint of this work is available here: (link)
  • [October 2025] My masters student, Antonio Junco de Haas, defended his master’s thesis! His topic was on lossless event compression, and a copy of his thesis can be found here: (link) and the associated presentation can be found here (link)
  • [August 2025] The 2nd Annual Coordination and Cooperation in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (CoCoMARL) workshop at the Reinforcement Learning conference was a success! Thank you to all the wonderful people that attended, and to all the other amazing co-organizers. The workshop website is here.
  • [July 2025] My recent journal paper on multi-agent reinforcement learning for satellite coordination is now published in the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics! The link is here
  • [May 2025] I gave a talk with the University of Michigan LATTICE Group!
  • [April 2025] I gave a talk with the WeLEAP Aerospace group!
  • [March 2025] The recording of my PhD defense is now available. You can watch it on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/WJhU9ZeHSjo
  • [March 2025] I was interviewed by Universe Today to talk about my research. Thank you so so much to Frasier for having me, the link to the interview is here.
  • [March 2025] Our paper “Design and Analysis of an Event Camera Payload for Space-Based Object Detection on the EventSat 6U CubeSat Mission” was accepted to the 15th IAA Symposium on Small Satellites in Berlin.
  • [February 2025] My paper “Asynchronous Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Limited Communication” is now available on arxiv here. This paper was accepted to the 2025 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS) in Detroit.
  • [January 2025] I’m very flattered to share I was profiled by MIT News! The attached story is here.

2024

  • [December 2024] I’ve accepted a position as a postdoc at Technical University Munich with the Chair of Spacecraft Systems.
  • [November 2024] I’ve defended my PhD! My thesis is titled “Leveraging Information Sharing for Satellite Coordination and Navigation”
  • [October 2024] Our journal paper on fairness in cooperative multi-agent navigation problems has been accepted to the ACM Journal on Autonomous Transportation Systems. The preprint on arXiv is available here
  • [September 2024] I spoke on a panel about applying to graduate school at Olin College of Engineering
  • [August 2024] My M Eng student, Adina Golden, submitted her thesis! Congratulations Adina!
  • [August 2024] I will be at the first annual Reinforcement Learning Conference in Amherst Massachusetts! Please reach out if you would like to chat about my work!
  • [July 2024] I am helping organize a social for Queer in AI at the Reinforcement Learning Conference. Come join the social on Sunday August 11 at 12:15.
  • [July 2024] I was invited to speak with the MIT Media Lab’s Space Enabled group.
  • [May 2024] Our workshop paper on fairness in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning has been accepted to the Reinforcement Learning Conference!
  • [April 2024] I was selected as one of the finalists at MIT’s Research Slam
  • [March 2024] I was invited to speak at University of Michigans Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Department
  • [February 2024] My workshop proposal to the Reinforcement Learning Conference was accepted! Check out the workshop “Coordination and Cooperation in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning” and submit a paper!
  • [January 2024] I completed MIT’s Research Mentoring Certificate program

2023

  • [December 2023] Our work from NASA JPL’s Planetary Science Summer school has been made into two papers at the American Geophysical Union. Check out “The Architecture of Nautilus: A Multi-Flyby Mission Concept to Triton” and “The Science Case for Nautilus: A Multi-Flyby Mission Concept to Triton” for some really exciting mission design on the largest unmapped expanse in our solar system!
  • [September 2023] I was selected to participate in the 2023 Future Leaders in Aerospace Symposium
  • [July 2023] Our paper, “Scalable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning through Intelligent Information Aggregation” was accepted to ICML
  • [July 2023] I gave a spotlight talk for the Air Force Research Lab Autonomy Capability Team
  • [June 2023] I was selected to participate in the Nexus NextProf Faculty Workshop
  • [May 2023] My paper proposing a game theoretic framework for satellite collision avoidance was accepted to the AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialist Conference!
  • [May 2023] I was a selected participant for NASA JPL’s Planetary Science Summer School