Esen Yel is an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) department since January 2024. Her research focuses on planning, safety monitoring and validation, and online learning for autonomous systems under uncertainties. Specifically, she aims to build autonomous systems that can make accurate predictions under uncertainties and make robust and safe decisions accordingly. Before joining RPI, she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University at Stanford Intelligent Systems Lab (SISL) and Stanford Center for AI Safety. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bogazici University in Turkey.