Karen Leung  

 



  ![](/sites/default/files/person/KarenLeung.jpg)

  

 I am a research scientist working with NVIDIA's Autonomous Vehicle Research Group. My research interests include safe and interaction-aware planning and control for autonomous vehicles, and developing structured and interpretable deep learning models grounded by logic.

I received my Ph.D. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University. My Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "On Using Formal Methods for Safe and Robust Robot Autonomy," leverages techniques from formal methods to provide safety assurances for a robot autonomy stack and build a computational paradigm to infuse logic into robot learning.

Check out my [personal website](http://faculty.washington.edu/kymleung/) to find out more.



   Research Area(s)

[Autonomous Vehicles](/index.php/research-area/autonomous-vehicles)

[Robotics](/index.php/research-area/robotics)

 

 

  

 Main Field of Interest

[Autonomous Vehicles](/index.php/research-area/autonomous-vehicles)

 

  

 Google Scholar

[https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ny8W8bcAAAAJ&hl=en](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ny8W8bcAAAAJ&hl=en)

 

  

 

 

 



 ### Publications

 

### 2023 

[Interpretable Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Vehicles via Counterfactual Responsibility](/index.php/publication/2023-10_interpretable-trajectory-prediction-autonomous-vehicles-counterfactual)

Kai-Chieh Hsu, [Karen Leung](/index.php/person/karen-leung), [Yuxiao Chen](/index.php/person/yuxiao-chen), Jaime Fernandez Fisac, [Marco Pavone](/index.php/person/marco-pavone)



[IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)](https://ieee-iros.org/)









[Task-Aware Risk Estimation of Perception Failures for Autonomous Vehicles](/publication/2023-07_task-aware-risk-estimation-perception-failures-autonomous-vehicles)

Pasquale Antonante, [Sushant Veer](/person/sushant-veer), [Karen Leung](/person/karen-leung), [Xinshuo Weng](/person/xinshuo-weng), Luca Carlone, [Marco Pavone](/person/marco-pavone)



[Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) 2023](https://roboticsconference.org/)









[Refining Obstacle Perception Safety Zones via Maneuver-Based Decomposition](/publication/2023-06_refining-obstacle-perception-safety-zones-maneuver-based-decomposition)

Sever Topan, [Yuxiao Chen](/person/yuxiao-chen), [Ed Schmerling](/person/ed-schmerling), [Karen Leung](/person/karen-leung), Jonas Nilsson, Michael Cox, [Marco Pavone](/person/marco-pavone)



[IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV)](https://2023.ieee-iv.org/)









[Learning Autonomous Vehicle Safety Concepts from Demonstrations](/publication/2023-05_learning-autonomous-vehicle-safety-concepts-demonstrations)

[Karen Leung](/person/karen-leung), [Sushant Veer](/person/sushant-veer), [Edward Schmerling](/person/ed-schmerling), [Marco Pavone](/person/marco-pavone)



[American Control Conference (ACC) 2023](https://acc2023.a2c2.org/)









[Receding Horizon Planning with Rule Hierarchies for Autonomous Vehicles](/publication/2023-05_receding-horizon-planning-rule-hierarchies-autonomous-vehicles)

[Sushant Veer](/person/sushant-veer), [Karen Leung](/person/karen-leung), Ryan Cosner, [Yuxiao Chen](/person/yuxiao-chen), [Marco Pavone](/person/marco-pavone)



[IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2023](https://www.icra2023.org/)









[Task-Aware Risk Estimation of Perception Failures for Autonomous Vehicles](/index.php/publication/2023-05_task-aware-risk-estimation-perception-failures-autonomous-vehicles)

Pasquale Antonante, [Sushant Veer](/index.php/person/sushant-veer), [Karen Leung](/index.php/person/karen-leung), [Xinshuo Weng](/index.php/person/xinshuo-weng), Luca Carlone, [Marco Pavone](/index.php/person/marco-pavone)



[Arxiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.01870)









### 2022 

[Task-Relevant Failure Detection for Trajectory Predictors in Autonomous Vehicles](/index.php/publication/2022-12_task-relevant-failure-detection-trajectory-predictors-autonomous-vehicles)

Alec Farid, [Sushant Veer](/index.php/person/sushant-veer), [Boris Ivanovic](/index.php/person/boris-ivanovic), [Karen Leung](/index.php/person/karen-leung), [Marco Pavone](/index.php/person/marco-pavone)



[Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2022](https://corl2022.org/)









[Interaction-Dynamics-Aware Perception Zones for Obstacle Detection Safety Evaluation](/index.php/publication/2022-06_interaction-dynamics-aware-perception-zones-obstacle-detection-safety)

Sever Topan, [Karen Leung](/index.php/person/karen-leung), [Yuxiao Chen](/index.php/person/yuxiao-chen), Pritish Tupekar, [Edward Schmerling](/index.php/person/ed-schmerling), Jonas Nilsson, Michael Cox, [Marco Pavone](/index.php/person/marco-pavone)



[IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV) 2022](https://iv2022.com/)