Karen Leung

Karen Leung is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, where she is the director of the Control and Trustworthy Robotics Laboratory. Before joining the University of Washington, she was a Research Scientist within the Autonomous Vehicle Research Group at NVIDIA. She received her Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 2021. Her main research interests are in the development of safe, intelligent, and trustworthy robotic systems, especially those that interact with humans and operate in safety-critical settings. She is a recipient of the NSF Career Award (2025), UW + Amazon Science Hub Faculty Research Award (2022), the William F. Ballhaus Prize for best Ph.D. Thesis (2022), and the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (US) (2018).

Currently, she is the Director of the UW+Amazon Science Hub.