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Karen Leung

Faculty Photo

Director of UW+Amazon Science Hub

Juris Vagners and Linda Christianson Endowed Faculty Fellow
Aeronautics & Astronautics

Assistant Professor
Aeronautics & Astronautics

Pronouns: She/Her

Biography

Karen Leung is an Assistant Professor and the Juris Vagners & Linda Christianson Endowed Faculty Fellow in Aeronautics & Astronautics at the University of Washington, where she directs the Control and Trustworthy Robotics Lab (CTRL), which focuses on developing safe, intelligent, and trustworthy autonomous systems that can operate seamlessly with, alongside, and around humans. She is currently the Director of the UW+Amazon Science Hub. Before joining UW, Karen was a research scientist at NVIDIA, working in the Autonomous Vehicle Research Group. Karen received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University and a combined B.S./B.E. in Mathematics and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2025), an Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (2024), the William F. Ballhaus Prize for Best Ph.D. Thesis Award (2021), and Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2018).

Education

  • Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • B.Eng. in Aeronautical (Space) Engineering, University of Sydney
  • B.S. in Mathematics (Advanced), University of Sydney

News

Isaac Remy named Amazon AI Fellow

The fellowship recognizes Remy's work in the CTRL Lab on making autonomous systems safer and more socially aware.

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Karen Leung wins NSF CAREER Award

This award will support building autonomous systems with enhanced human-like social skills. 

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Leung to lead Science Hub

Karen Leung will lead the Amazon Science Hub’s efforts to develop research and education programs in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

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Graduate research on display

Lightning simulators, plasma physics, medical simulations, and satellite networks round out the research lineup.

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