Chuchu Fan

Chuchu Fan is the Leonardo Career Development Professor and Director of the REALM Lab (REliable Autonomous system Lab) at MIT's School of Engineering, with a primary appointment in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. Her work bridges formal methods, control theory, and machine learning to ensure safety in autonomous systems.

• Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2019)
• B.E., Tsinghua University (2013)

Her research focuses on rigorous safety verification of autonomous systems through neural Lyapunov-barrier functions, control contraction metrics, and formal logic specifications. Recent work emphasizes LLM integration for symbolic planning, multi-robot collaboration, and robustness against model uncertainties.

The 15 most recent articles highlight trends in safety-critical control using graph neural networks, reinforcement learning, and temporal logic. Key themes include collision avoidance, multi-agent coordination, and runtime safety filters applied to drones, self-driving cars, and microgrids.

Scientific Awards & Honors:

• 2025 ONR YIP Award
• 2023 NSF CAREER & AFOSR YIP Awards
• 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award
• 2016 Rising Stars in EECS

As head of the REALM Lab, she leads projects on autonomous air taxis, safety verification, and neural certificates for robotic systems. Her teaching includes courses on feedback control and formal methods for autonomous systems.