PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Aleksandra Faust

Computer scientist Aleksandra Faust researches reinforcement learning, robotics, language-model agents and molecular AI. She earned a mathematics degree from the University of Belgrade and computer-science degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of New Mexico; her 2014 dissertation developed PEARL for preference-balancing tasks, and she worked at Sandia from 2006 to 2015 before joining Waymo in 2015. At Google Brain, she co-founded a reinforcement-learning team and coauthored a 2021 paper on meta-learning algorithms; at Google DeepMind, she contributed to Gemini and coauthored a 2024 benchmark of language-model agents on combined web tasks. She received the IEEE RAS Early Career Award for Industry in 2020 and became an IEEE Fellow in 2026. Since February 2026, she is Research Director at Google DeepMind, leads Frontier AI Health efforts and serves as a Program Chair for ICLR 2026.

Works
117
Citations
3,281
h-index
29
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2017

    Sandia and Waymo robotics

    She earns a B.S. in mathematics at the University of Belgrade, a Master of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. in computer science with distinction at the University of New Mexico. From 2006 to 2015, she works as a Senior Computer Science R&D Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories; her 2014 dissertation develops PEARL, a reinforcement-learning method for preference-balancing tasks. At Waymo / Google X, she is a Senior Research Robotics Engineer from 2015 to 2017, working on machine learning for self-driving-car planning and controls.

  2. 2017–2023

    Google Brain's AutoRL work

    She joins Robotics at Google / Google Brain in 2017 and becomes a Senior Staff Research Scientist by 2021. She co-founds its reinforcement-learning research team and coauthors a 2021 paper that searches computational graphs to learn reinforcement-learning algorithms.

  3. 2020

    An IEEE Early Career Award

    She receives the IEEE RAS Early Career Award for Industry in 2020.

  4. 2023–2025

    Research Director at DeepMind

    She serves as Research Director at Google DeepMind from 2023 to 2025 and contributes to Gemini and generalist web agents. In 2024, she coauthors the CompWoB benchmark for multi-step web tasks; prompted language-model agents score 94.0% on base tasks and 24.9% on compositional tasks.

  5. June 2025

    Chief AI Officer at Genesis

    She becomes Chief AI Officer at Genesis Therapeutics in June 2025, after serving as Research Director at Google DeepMind.

  6. October 2025

    The Pearl foundation model

    In October 2025, she coauthors Pearl, a foundation model for protein-ligand cofolding at scale.

  7. 2026

    An IEEE fellowship

    The IEEE names her a Fellow in 2026 for contributions to technical leadership in scalable learning-based autonomy and foundation models.

  8. Since February 2026

    Director at Google DeepMind

    She returns to Google DeepMind as Director of Research in February 2026 and leads Frontier AI Health efforts. She serves as a Program Chair for ICLR 2026.

A language model matched the links in this timeline to people, organizations and papers (provisional, model-judged).

Career

  1. Since 2023Google DeepMindResearch Director, Director of Research
  2. From 2025Genesis TherapeuticsChief AI Officer
  3. 2017–2023Google BrainSenior Staff Research Scientist
  4. 2015–2017GoogleSenior Research Robotics Engineer
  5. 2013–2019University of New Mexico
  6. 2006–2015National Nuclear Security AdministrationSenior Computer Science R&D Engineer

Education

  1. University of BelgradeB.S. in mathematics
  2. University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignMaster of Computer Science
  3. University of New MexicoPh.D. in computer science

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. PRM-RL: Long-range Robotic Navigation Tasks by Combining Reinforcement Learning and Sampling-Based Planning2018 · IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation · 335 citations
  2. Learning Navigation Behaviors End-to-End With AutoRL2019 · IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters · 226 citations
  3. Long-Range Indoor Navigation With PRM-RL2020 · IEEE Transactions on Robotics · 170 citations
  4. Automated aerial suspended cargo delivery through reinforcement learning2014 · Artificial Intelligence · 167 citations
  5. RL-RRT: Kinodynamic Motion Planning via Learning Reachability Estimators From RL Policies2019 · IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters · 167 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. The median h-index is 55 at universities and 20 at frontier AI labsIncludes Aleksandra Faust. The median h-index is 55 at universities and 20 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, citations and moves to estimate how universities and frontier labs contribute to AI research.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  3. Google alumni founded or led 77 other organizations, the most among the labs we compareIncludes Google. We trace 177 organizations founded or led by AI lab alumni, and 186 career moves between the labs.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1962 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Aleksandra Faust - CV afaust.info. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. Reinforcement Learning and Planning for Preference Balancing Tasks digitalrepository.unm.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. RAS Student Activities Committee Panel: Transition to a Career in Industry ieee-ras.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. Evolving Reinforcement Learning Algorithms arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. Exposing Limitations of Language Model Agents in Sequential-Task Compositions on the Web deepmind.google. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Genesis Therapeutics Appoints Aleksandra Faust as Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer markets.financialcontent.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. Pearl: A Foundation Model for Placing Every Atom in the Right Location arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Announces 2026 Class of Fellows ieee-ras.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  9. Aleksandra Faust afaust.info. Checked 18 October 2026.
  10. ICLR 2026 Organizing Committee iclr.cc. Checked 18 October 2026.
  11. Fireside Chat with Aleksandra Faust: Director of Research at Google DeepMind, 02/06/2026 careerservices.fas.harvard.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.