Maggie Wang

I am an Aeronautics and Astronautics PhD candidate at Stanford University, advised by Prof. Mac Schwager and Prof. Jiajun Wu, and affiliated with the Multi-Robot Systems Lab and the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. My research explores how robots can acquire and adapt skills in the real world through physical and semantic understanding. I work on vision-language-action models, sim-to-real transfer, and world models. I am particularly motivated by challenges inspired by deep space exploration and am grateful to be funded by the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) Fellowship.

Before beginning my PhD, I worked on autonomous drones at Skydio after graduating from Harvard with a B.A. in Physics and S.M. in Computer Science. During my undergrad, I conducted research on robust pose estimation from 3D keypoints in the Robot Locomotion Group at MIT with Prof. Russ Tedrake.

Outside of research, I stay active with running, hiking, and cycling; explore art through oil and watercolor painting, photography, and writing; and deepen my spiritual practices through yoga, meditation, and making (and enjoying) good food. Along with some friends, I also co-produce The Overview, a newsletter, podcast, and resource hub for aspiring aerospace engineers and students.