Veera Venkata Ram Murali Krishna Rao “Krishna” Muvva, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computing, has been named the recipient of the 2025 AIAA Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Award.
Presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), this award recognizes graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in research and leadership within aerospace-related fields. It is one of AIAA’s highest graduate honors.
Muvva’s research focuses on enabling deep learning–based perception and control in uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). His work centers on UAV-to-UAV tracking, localization in GPS-disrupted environments, and obstacle-aware navigation. He is particularly interested in combining model-based approaches with neural networks to enable robust UAV operation in challenging real-world conditions.
At Nebraska, Muvva is co-advised by Dr. Marilyn Wolf, Elmer E. Koch Professor of School of Computing, and Dr. Santosh Kumar Pitla, Professor of Biological Systems Engineering. He also serves as Chair of the IEEE Nebraska Computer Chapter, member of the AIAA Uncrewed and Autonomous Systems Integration Committee (UASIC), and a Friend of the AIAA Intelligent Systems Technical Committee (ISTC).
Muvva’s recognition highlights Nebraska’s growing leadership in autonomous systems research and its contributions to the future of intelligent flight.
October 15, 2025
Veera Venkata Ram Murali Krishna Rao “Krishna” Muvva
