Sofiya Semenova

Sofiya is ...

I'm a final year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, where I design and build robust systems for real-time cyber-physical applications. My Ph.D. research focuses on the "systems" dimension of Visual SLAM -- specifically, how system design can drive the performance and reliability of Visual SLAM in real-world environments.

My work sits at the intersection of systems research and applied engineering. I have extensive experience with a wide range of technical stacks and robotics/vision libraries, including Rust, C++, Python, ROS, OpenCV, GTSAM, g2o, and Foxglove. A core theme of my research is introducing Rust into the robotics space. Most recently, I led the development of Bauhaus, a Rust-based framework for modular, memory-safe Visual SLAM systems.

Outside academia, I’ve contributed to production-scale systems at Google and edX -- from building predictive models to reduce Chromium page latency, to improving video infrastructure and engagement features in large-scale learning platforms.