Karen Leung

kymleung [at] uw [dot] edu

Assistant Professor @ UW A&A

Research Scientist @ NVIDIA

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Aeronautics and Astronautics department where I direct the Control and Trustworthy Robotics Lab (CTRL). I am also a research scientist at NVIDIA Research.


I am the Juris Vagners and Linda Christianson Endowed Faculty Fellow in Aeronautics & Astronautics. The fellowship provides support to faculty involved in controls and controls-related research and teaching with the goal of maintaining and expanding the excellence of the program.

My research focuses on building trustworthy autonomous systems that can operate seamlessly with, alongside, and around humans. My work lies in the intersection of dynamics and control, robotics, and machine learning. You can learn more by watching my PhD defense and checking out my lab website.

Prior to joining UW, I was a research scientist at the Autonomous Vehicle Research Group at NVIDIA, where I currently holds a partial appointment. I received a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University.

recent news

Jul, 2024

I’m deeply honored to receive the an Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. I thank my students for nominating me!

Jan, 2024

I was part of a panel on Exploring Professions in & Beyond Academia: A Symposium for Ph.D. Students and Postdocs (Sciences and Engineering Day). It was great to see a packed room full of students interested in research, and the opportunity to share my own experiences and my journey to get to where I am today. Thank you Ziyan Bai for the invitation.

Nov, 2023

I gave an invited talk “What does it mean to be safe for human-robot interactions?” at Virginia Tech Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. Thank you Mazen Farhood for the invitation!

Jun, 2023

I gave an invited talk “Towards Responsibility-Aware Safety for Autonomous Vehicles” at the Intelligent Vehicle Symposium Workshop on Social, interactive and safe behaviors for AVs: benchmarks, models and applications. Thank you for the invitation!

Jun, 2023

I presented my paper Learning Autonomous Vehicle Safety Concepts from Demonstrations at ACC 2023. I presented at an interactive session where I presented a poster.