Elad Sharony

Ph.D. Student · Electrical and Computer Engineering · (RL)² Lab, Technion
eladsharony@campus.technion.ac.il esharony.me

Research Interests

My research focuses on reinforcement learning and optimization for dynamical systems. I leverage vision-language models (VLMs) and large language models (LLMs) to enhance data efficiency, exploration, and decision-making, enabling robust perception, reasoning, and generalization in robotics, autonomous systems, and high-dimensional environments.

Publications and Preprints

VLM-Guided Experience Replay Under Review
Elad Sharony, Tom Jurgenson, Orr Krupnik, Dotan Di Castro, Shie Mannor
Learning Multiple Initial Solutions to Optimization Problems ICRA'26
Elad Sharony, Heng Yang, Tong Che, Marco Pavone, Shie Mannor, Peter Karkus

Research / Industry Experience

NVIDIA Research May. 26 – Present
Research Internship
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) Apr. 24 – Oct. 24
Research Internship
  • Developed VLM-based trajectory embeddings for diversity-aware experience replay in robotic manipulation RL.
Intel Corporation Apr. 21 – Jan. 23
Control Engineer
  • Designed and integrated a data-driven autotune pipeline for thermal controllers. Additionally, developed and deployed a pneumatic control system to ensure stable and reliable thermal contact.

Education

Technion — Israel Institute of Technology Mar. 22 – Present (Expected 27)
Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering (Direct Track)
  • Research: Integrating fast (System 1) and slow (System 2) thinking into RL and optimization for robotics and autonomy.
  • Advisor: Prof. Shie Mannor
  • GPA: 92.0
Technion — Israel Institute of Technology Oct. 18 – Mar. 22 (Early Bird)
B.Sc., Mechanical Engineering
  • Thesis: Non-contact topographic sensing using vibration and machine learning to predict the distance between surfaces.
  • Advisors: Prof. Itzhak Bucher and Dr. Yoav Vered
  • GPA: 94.9 (Summa Cum Laude)

Teaching and Mentoring

Teaching Assistant Control Theory, Control System Design, Control Systems 1 Project Supervision Developing Robotic Knot-Tying Skills, Reinforcement Learning in Isaac Simulator

Honors & Awards

Reamim — Selective Program Supporting Outstanding Research-oriented Students Oct' 18 – Mar' 22
President's List for Academic Excellence Fall 21/22, Spring 20/21, Fall 20/21
Dean's List for Academic Excellence Spring 19/20, Fall 19/20, Spring 18/19

Services

Reviewer CoRL'25, ICLR'26, ICML'26, NeurIPS'26 Technical Editor "Reinforcement Learning: Foundations" — S. Mannor, Y. Mansour, A. Tamar (CUP, 2026)