PhD Candidate
Faculty of Computer Science
University of Toronto

Mustafa Haiderbhai

Hello! I am fifth year PhD Student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto advised by Prof. Lueder A. Kahrs. I am a part of the MedCVR Lab, where I research autonomous robotics, simulation, and computer vision for surgery.

I am currently completing a fellowship at Google DeepMind with the MuJoCo simulation team, working on accelerated simulations for robotics. Previously, I completed an ML Residency at (Google) X, the moonshot factory working on RL for wearable robotics. Prior to my PhD, I was at the Metrics Lab at the University of Ottawa working under Prof. Pascal Fallavollita where I recieved my Bachelors and Masters degrees.

My Resume: Mustafa Haiderbhai CV

News:

2025-05-01: Started my fellowship at Google DeepMind with the MuJoCo simulation team
2025-04-11: Our conference paper - MuJoCo Playground - has been accepted to RSS 2025
2024-06-14: Our journal paper has - Sim2Real Surgical Cutting - been accepted to TASE, and will be presented at ICRA@40
2023-08-30: Our journal paper - Sim2Real Nonprehensile Dynamic Manipulation - has been accepted to RA-L, and will be presented at IROS2024
2022-04-30: Our conference paper - Robust Sim2Real Transfer with the dVRK - has been accepted to IROS2022
2022-03-07: Started my ML Residency at (Google) X, the moonshot factory
2021-09-01: Our paper has been accepted to the Hamlyn Symposium
2020-09-01: Started my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Toronto!
2020-08-21: Successfully defended my Masters thesis on Generative Adversarial Networks for Synthetic X-rays
2020-04-27: Paper on synthetic X-rays using GANs published in IJCARS

Selected Works:

Muse: A Pipeline For Reinforcement Learning From Simulation With Surgical Robotics
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Andrew Wu, Radian Gondokaryono, Lueder A. Kahrs
Under Review
Paper (In Review) / Website (Coming Soon)

MuJoCo Playground
Kevin Zakka, Baruch Tabanpour, Qiayuan Liao, Mustafa Haiderbhai, Samuel Holt, Jing Yuan Luo, Arthur Allshire, Erik Frey, Koushil Sreenath, Lueder A. Kahrs, Carmelo Sferrazza, Yuval Tassa, Pieter Abbeel
Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2025
Paper / Website

Sim2Real Rope Cutting With a Surgical Robot Using Vision-Based Reinforcement Learning
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Radian Gondokaryono, Andrew Wu, Lueder A. Kahrs
IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
Paper / Website

Learning Nonprehensile Dynamic Manipulation: Sim2real Vision-based Policy with a Surgical Robot
Radian Gondokaryono, Mustafa Haiderbhai, Sai Aneesh Suryadevara, Lueder A. Kahrs
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Paper / Website

Robust Sim2Real Transfer with the da Vinci Research Kit: A Study On Camera, Lighting, and Physics Domain Randomization
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Radian Gondokaryono, Thomas Looi, James Drake, Lueder A. Kahrs
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2022
Paper / Website

A modular ROS-based dVRK teleoperation controller architecture
Radian Gondokaryono, Mustafa Haiderbhai, Adnan Munawar, Thomas Looi, James Drake, Lueder A. Kahrs
Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics 2022
Video / Paper

Thompson Sampling Multi-Armed Bandit for Facial Feature Optimization
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Allen Bao, Emmy Liu, Joe Hoang, Molly Sun, Joseph Jay Williams
2021
Code

pix2xray: Converting RGB Images into X-Rays Using Generative Adversarial Networks
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Sergio Ledesma, Sing Chun Lee, Matthias Seibold, Phillip Furnstahl, Nassir Navab, Pascal Fallavollita
IJCARS 2020
Paper

Automatic C-Arm Positioning Using Multi-Functional User Interface
Mustafa Haiderbhai, Jesus Guerrero-Turrubiates, Vinod Gutta, Pascal Fallavollita
CMBES 2019
Paper

Comparison of a Mixed-Reality Technology to Cadavers for Gross Anatomy Learning
Jeffrey Lao, Stephanie Chevrier, Mustafa Haiderbhai, Sheila Gonzalez-Reyna, Pascal Fallvollita
IMNO 2018
Paper