The ELLIS Institute Tübingen is pleased to welcome Dr. Kashyap Chitta as a Principal Investigator and Hector-Endowed Fellow. Kashyap, an expert in autonomous systems and physical AI, will lead a new research group - the Physical AI Lab - dedicated to pushing the boundaries of how machines interact with the physical world.
His research focuses on robot learning in both simulation and the real world. This approach will reduce the cost of physical interaction, enabling deployment of physical intelligence to a wide range of robotic systems and environments.
Alongside his new academic position, Kashyap will continue his work with KE:SAI (Kyutai ELLIS Scalable Autonomous Intelligence gGmbH), a non-profit open science research laboratory he co-founded in May 2026 together with Prof. Andreas Geiger, Prof. Bernhard Schölkopf, Bernhard Jaeger, and Daniel Dauner. By balancing these parallel roles, his work is uniquely positioned to bridge foundational institutional research with agile, real-world applications.
Kashyap brings a distinguished educational and professional background back to the Tübingen AI ecosystem, having collaborated with some of the world's leading research institutions and tech companies:
- He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the RV College of Engineering in India, followed by a Master’s degree in Computer Vision from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) under the supervision of Prof. Martial Hebert.
- From 2019 to 2025, he completed his PhD within the Autonomous Vision Group at the University of Tübingen, supervised by Prof. Andreas Geiger.
- Prior to his new appointment at the Institute, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher within NVIDIA’s Autonomous Vehicle Research Group.
Recognized Track Record in Autonomous Systems
Kashyap’s pioneering contributions to artificial intelligence have been widely recognized by the global research community. He was selected for the highly competitive ICCV 2023 Doctoral Consortium, named an RSS Pioneer in 2023, and has been routinely honored as an Outstanding Reviewer at core machine learning conferences, including CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, and NeurIPS.
Furthermore, his developed methodologies have captured multiple top awards across major industry benchmark events, including the CARLA, nuPlan, Waymo, HUGSIM, and KITScenes autonomous driving challenges.
Expanding the Institute's Impact
By establishing his new research group, Kashyap significantly reinforces the ELLIS Institute Tübingen’s overarching mission: advancing world-class machine learning research and rapidly translating it into meaningful, real-world applications. His expertise in data-driven simulation and embodied systems ensures Tübingen remains a global focal point for the physical AI revolution.
→ Read more about the recent launch of the KE:SAI here
→ Read more about the ELLIS Institute research groups and projects