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

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.

May, 2023

I gave an invited talk “Towards Responsibility-Aware Safety for Autonomous Vehicles” at the 3rd ACC Workshop on Recent Advancement of Human Autonomy Interaction and Integration. Thank you for the invitation!

Mar, 2023

I recently gave a talk on “Revisiting what it means to be safe for human-robot interactions” at the University of Michigan Controls Conversations with the DASC Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University Tartan Planning Series with the AirLab.

Jan, 2023

Four papers recently accepted to ICRA 2023 and ACC 2023! Learn more about them here.