Stanford
Navigation and Autonomous Vehicles Lab
Navigation and Autonomous Vehicles (NAV) Lab

People

Director

Prof. Grace X. Gao

Associate Professor
James and Anna Marie Spilker Faculty Fellow
Stanford University
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Department of Electrical Engineering (by courtesy)
Director, Navigation and Autonomous Vehicles Laboratory (Stanford NAV Lab)
Co-lead, Robotics and Autonomous Systems Area, Stanford SystemX Alliance
Co-director, Stanford Center for AI Safety
​Member, Center for Automotive Research at Stanford

Ph.D. Students

Guillem Casadesus Vila

Lunar positioning, navigation, and timing

  • Ph.D. candidate, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, 2024
  • B.S. Aerospace Engineering, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, 2022 
  • B.S. Telecommunications Engineering, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, 2022

Kaila Coimbra

Lunar surface rover positioning

  • Ph.D. candidate, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering with minor in Aerospace Engineering, California Institute of Technology, 2023

Adam Dai

Provably safe trajectory planning under uncertainty

  • Ph.D. candidate, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
  • M.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, 2021
  • B.S. Electrical Engineering with minor in Computer Science, California Institute of Technology, 2019

Lyla Dong

Sustainable wildfire retardants and decision-making for safer prescribed burns

  • Ph.D. candidate, Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University
  • M.S. Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 2024
  • B.S. Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, 2022

 

Sitan Huang

Lunar Positioning, Navigation, and Timing

  • Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
  • B.E. Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 2025 

 

Keidai Iiyama

Navigation for the Moon

  • Ph.D. candidate, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • M.E. Aeronautics and Astronautics, The University of Tokyo, 2021
  • B.E. Aeronautics and Astronautics, The University of Tokyo, 2019 

Matthias Kura

Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) on the Moon and Mars

  • M.S. Aerospace, Technical University of Munich, 2025
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Munich, 2023

Daniel Neamati

Digital twins of wildland and urban areas for sustainability and localization

  • Ph.D. candidate, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, 2024
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, minor in Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, 2021

Mira Partha

3D (NeRF/GS) environment mapping and vision-/language-based localization

  • Ph.D. candidate, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
  • M.Eng. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020
  • S.B. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019

Vivian Sattler

Lunar Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)

  • M.S. Physics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 2025
  • B.S. Physics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, 2023

Elena Wittemyer

Lunar surface navigation and mapping

  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, 2025

Asta Wu

GNSS-based relative localization for tandem drifting cars

  • Ph.D. candidate, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, 2022
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering; Minor Computer Science, California Institute of Technology, 2020      

MS Students

Henry Demarest

Lunar surface navigation, mapping, and control

  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, Yale University, 2025

Hayes Edwards

Autocalibration of Camera Extrinsics for Airplanes

  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University 
  • B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy, 2024

Grace Hendricks 

Autocalibration of Camera Extrinsics for Airplanes

  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy, 2025

Sukeerth Ramkumar

Multi-agent uncertainty planning

  • M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology

Cole Robins

Associating vehicle crash typologies with Neural City Maps using visual language models

  • M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
  • B.S. Engineering Physics, Stanford University
  • B.S. Mathematics, Stanford University

 

Ashlynn Sweet

Aircraft navigation and autonomy

  • M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University
  • B.S. Mechanical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy, 2025

 

Evan Twarog

Environmental sensor networks for sustainability and resilience

  • M.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
  • B.S. Electrical Engineering, US Coast Guard Academy, 2019

Sydney Yan

Navigation in Changing Environments

  • M.S. Computer Science, Stanford University
  • B.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, 2025

Undergraduate Students

Jack Goler

Environment mapping using Neural Radiance Fields and Gaussian Splatting

  • B.S. Candidate, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Stanford University

Angel Gunaman

Lunar surface mapping

  • B.S. Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, Minor in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Madison Hunt

Satellite imagery comparison to 3D mapping of prescribed burn ecosystem recovery

  • B.S. Candidate, Civil Engineering, Stanford University

Bekhruz Malikov

Sustainability applications of NeRF, Gaussian splatting, and 3D image reconstruction

  • B.S. Candidate, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Rudraksh Mohapatra

3D Reconstruction for Sustainability

  • B.S. Candidate, Electrical Engineering, Minor in Mathematics, Stanford University

Jerry Wang

Environment mapping using Neural Radiance Fields and Gaussian Splatting

  • B.S. Candidate, Engineering Physics, Stanford University

Administrative Staff

David Luna       

  • Everyone's favorite go-to person to keep the lab running

Non-Human Members

Navi-chu

  • A cheerful expert who enjoys joining NAV Lab’s thrilling activities (including rollercoaster rides) and spreading smiles.

Alumni

Postdocs

Tara Mina, Shubh Gupta, Liang Heng, Shreyas Kousik, Akshay Shetty, and Sriramya Bhamidipati

Graduate Students

Brian Wu, Tanis Priddle, Vishal Jain, Axel Wennstrom, Pauline de la Hogue Moran, Arun Chandler, Natasha Evans, Alexandre Carlhammar, Anna Sulzer, Marta Cortinovis, Tara Mina, Adyasha Mohanty, Derek Knowles, Ashwin Kanhere, Shubh Gupta, Alana Sanchez, Tejas Deo, Anonto Zaman, Emil Biju, Skye Vandeleest, Shivam Soni, Craig Babiarz, Shubhendra Chauhan, Derek Chen, Daniel Chou, Arthur Chu, Edgar Chung, Bradley Cage Collicott, Cara Kataria, Athindran Ramesh Kumar, Andy Lai, Enyu Luo, Yuting Ng, Marco Nunez, Matthew Peretic, Pulkit Rustagi, Siddharth Tanwar, Alexandros Tzikas, Ridvan Yesiloglu, Rémy Zawislak, Victor Zhang, Nikhil Raghuraman, Cole Maxwell , Matthew Tan, Greg Lund, Torstein Eliassen, Ellie Prince, Akshay Shetty, Sriramya Bhamidipati, Guillem Rueda Oller, Timmy Hussain, Isabella Torres, Dalton Vega

Undergraduate Students

Thomas Deng, Francisco Flores, Siddhartha Jagannath, Alexandra Bacula, Oliver Cai, Katherine Carroll, Gilbert Cheng, Isaiah Colobong, Annie Fang, Emilio Garcia, Evan Hedding, Howy Ho, Isabella Juarez, Dan Jia, Zheng Lee, Anna Mattinger, Xuan Hao Ong, Caitlyn Plahn, John Pobega, Justin Song, Evan Chen, Heling Zhang, Raimon Roglans, Niklas Perujo, Connor Madell, Saym Imtiaz, Karolina Koziarski, David Stier, Cayla Withers, Rieun “Lin” Kim, Sabrina Gomes, Mary Cooper, Zachary Witzel