Kaustav Chakraborty
About Me
I am a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California and a Terminal Graduate Ph.D student of New Faculty in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University where I am advised by Prof. Somil Bansal as a part of the Safe and Intelligent Autonomy Lab.
I received my M.S. in Robotics from the Robotics Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from VIT University, Vellore, India.
I am currently a Research Intern at NVIDIA's Autonomous Vehicle Group where my work focuses on enhancing the safety evaluation of motion planning algorithms for autonomous vehicles.
Research Interests:
Safety of Autonomous Systems and Learning-enabled Components, Control and Planning for Safety-Critical Robots.
Note: I am actively looking for Full Time Positions for 2026 focusing on safety in the autonomous systems and robotics industry. If you are aware of such opportunities, please feel free to shoot me an email! My expected graduation date is December 2025.
News & Updates
Starting my summer research internship with NVIDIA's Autonomous Vehicle Group focusing on safety evaluation of motion planning algorithms!
Moving to Stanford's Aeronautics and Astronautics Department as a terminal graduate student!
Successfully passed my PhD qualifying exam! I am now officially a PhD candidate.
New paper on Enhancing Safety and Robustness of Vision-Based Controllers is out on arXiv.
Education
Stanford University
Terminal Graduate Ph.D Student
Aeronautics and Astronautics
2025
University of Southern California
Ph.D Candidate
Electrical and Computer Engineering
2021 - Present
University of Michigan
M.S. in Robotics
2019 - 2021
VIT University
B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering
2015 - 2019
Experience
NVIDIA
Research Intern
Autonomous Vehicle Group
June 2025 - Present
Stanford University
Research Assistant
Safe and Intelligent Autonomy Lab
2023 - Present
University of Southern California
Teaching Assistant
EE 482: Linear Control Systems
Fall 2022
