Leaping robots, AI companies and a NASA mission

When Aravind Srinivas arrived at UC Berkeley in 2020 hoping to join Pieter Abbeel’s robotics lab, he encountered an immediate obstacle: The lab was already full.Undeterred, Srinivas proposed that he and Abeel work together for six months so he could prove himself. What followed was such a prolific stretch of research that Abbeel found himself repeatedly asking about his new student’s well-being.“Honestly, the only big advice I ever had to give Aravind was the question, ‘Did you sleep?’” Abbeel recalls. He says Srinivas replied, “I cannot afford to sleep until I’m officially in your lab.” After joining Abbeel’s lab and being persuaded to rest, Srinivas completed what Abbeel calls “a really amazing Ph.D.,” went on to work at OpenAI and later founded Perplexity, the AI company built around answering questions with source-grounded responses.In this Berkeley Talks episode, Srinivas’ determination is one of several stories Abbeel, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley, shares about former students and postdoctoral researchers who went on to help found AI and robotics companies, contribute to influential research advances and, in one case, become a NASA astronaut. That astronaut, Woody Hoburg, came to Berkeley from MIT in 2011. At the time, he told Abeel that he knew the likelihood of becoming an astronaut was “effectively zero,” but was determined to try: “If I can make it from 0.1 to 1 by giving it my all, that’s what I’m going to do.” Hoburg went on to earn a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley, join NASA’s 2017 astronaut class and, in 2023, serve as the pilot of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, spending 186 days in space.For Abbeel, the common thread among his former students is not only brilliance but also generosity. “All of them (are) super nice,” he says. “And what I mean with that is it’s easy to be nice to your boss, you have to be. But they’re super nice to all their peers, everybody around them, new talent that wants to join. I’m really proud.”Abbeel’s lecture took place on April 17, 2026, as part of Berkeley’s “Brilliance of Berkeley” speaker series.Listen to the episode, read the transcript and watch the lecture on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks)Music by by HoliznaCC0.Photo by Elena Zhukova. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.