Dr. Nitish Srivastava

(BT/CSE/2011)

Dr. Nitish Srivastava is a machine learning and robotics researcher and technology entrepreneur whose work focuses on artificial intelligence, computer vision, deep learning and autonomous systems. He currently serves as Senior Director of Autonomy at Serve Robotics, where he works on autonomous navigation and the development of AI systems for real-world robotic delivery. He previously co-founded Vayu Robotics and served as its Chief Technology Officer, helping build an end-to-end autonomy platform for delivery robots using large-scale AI models. He received his B.Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 2011. He subsequently earned an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 2013 and a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from the University of Toronto in 2016. During his doctoral studies, he worked with Geoffrey Hinton and Ruslan Salakhutdinov on deep learning, including dropout, Boltzmann machines, sequence-to-sequence video models and transfer learning. Dr. Srivastava began his research career through internships at Ecole Centrale Paris, Microsoft Research Silicon Valley and Google. At Google, he worked with the Google Brain team on language models and with the Android Speech Recognition team on representation learning for raw speech signals. His early research experience established a foundation in machine learning, deep neural networks and representation learning. He subsequently co-founded Clarevision Research in 2015, a company focused on computer vision for autonomous driving. Clarevision developed models for real-time object detection, semantic segmentation and object tracking using LiDAR and camera data. The company was acquired by Apple in 2016, after which Dr. Srivastava joined Apple, where he worked on machine learning for autonomous systems and embodied agents. At Apple, he progressed from Staff ML Engineer to Staff Research Scientist, working on perception neural networks, sensor fusion, self-supervised learning and reinforcement learning for embodied agents. His work brought together advances in machine learning with the practical requirements of autonomous systems operating in complex physical environments. In February 2022, Dr. Srivastava co-founded Vayu Robotics and served as its CTO. Vayu was founded to develop autonomous mobility systems using large-scale AI models, with a particular emphasis on navigation in complex, unstructured environments. Under his technical leadership, the company developed an end-to-end autonomy stack, a data engine capable of generating challenging corner cases at scale and a training approach designed to enable seamless transfer between simulation and real-world robotic environments. Vayu's technology was ultimately acquired by Serve Robotics in August 2025. Serve described Vayu as a pioneer in urban robot navigation using large-scale AI models, and said the acquisition would combine Vayu's foundation-model technology and simulation capabilities with Serve's real-world autonomous delivery fleet and data. Dr. Srivastava and his fellow Vayu founders joined Serve as part of the transaction. Following the acquisition, Dr. Srivastava moved into his current role as Senior Director of Autonomy at Serve Robotics, where he continues to work on robotics, machine learning and autonomous navigation. His current work builds on the technology developed at Vayu and focuses on bringing foundation-model-based autonomy into large-scale real-world robotic deployment. His own account of the acquisition describes Vayu's work on an end-to-end autonomy stack, scalable corner-case generation, sim-to-real transfer and deployment on a robot fleet. Dr. Srivastava's career reflects a distinctive progression from fundamental research in deep learning to applied machine learning, computer vision and ultimately the development and commercialisation of autonomous robotic systems. His work has consistently focused on enabling machines to perceive, learn and act in complex physical environments, contributing to the evolution of AI from laboratory research to embodied, real-world applications.
Honouring his pioneering contributions to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Autonomous Robotics, and his distinguished impact as a researcher, entrepreneur and technology leader advancing AI-powered autonomous systems, IIT Kanpur confers upon Dr. Nitish Srivastava the Young Alumni Award 2026 for Professional Excellence.