PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

David Hsu

David Hsu is a computer scientist whose AI research connects robot planning, decision-making under uncertainty and human-robot collaboration. He earned degrees at the University of British Columbia and Stanford, then worked at Compaq’s Cambridge Research Laboratory and the University of North Carolina before becoming an associate professor at NUS by 2009. His 2008 SARSOP paper won the 2021 RSS Test of Time Award, and DESPOT received the 2022 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Award. With his collaborators, he coauthored COACH, a robot-teaching framework for cooperative skills. As of October 2026, he is a Provost’s Chair Professor at NUS, directs its Smart Systems Institute and serves as a director of NVIDIA Research Lab in Singapore.

Works
292
Citations
11,762
h-index
56
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2008

    SARSOP for POMDP planning

    In 2008, he coauthors with Hanna Kurniawati and Wee Sun Lee the paper SARSOP, a method for efficient point-based planning in partially observable Markov decision processes.

  2. 2009

    Degrees and an NUS career

    In 2009, he is an associate professor of computer science at the National University of Singapore. He earns a BSc in computer science and mathematics at the University of British Columbia and a PhD in computer science at Stanford, then works at Compaq’s Cambridge Research Laboratory and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  3. 2013

    DESPOT for online planning

    In 2013, he coauthors DESPOT: Online POMDP Planning with Regularization with Adhiraj Somani, Nan Ye, and Wee Sun Lee. The online planner uses sampled scenarios to search a sparse belief tree for a policy under uncertainty.

  4. 2015–2018

    Robotics chairs and IEEE Fellow

    He chairs and co-chairs major international robotics conferences, including Robotics: Science & Systems in 2015 and IEEE's International Conference on Robotics & Automation in 2016. IEEE elevates him to Fellow in 2018 for contributions to robot motion planning.

  5. 2021–2022

    POMDP awards and NUSAIL

    In 2021, RSS gives his 2008 SARSOP paper the Test of Time Award for efficient point-based POMDP planning. In 2022, the JAIR paper about DESPOT, published in 2017, wins the IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Award, and NUS officially launches its Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (NUSAIL) with Hsu as director in February 2022.

  6. 2023–2024

    COACH for robot teaching

    In 2023, he coauthors COACH: Cooperative Robot Teaching, which formalizes teaching as a Markov game that reduces to a partially observable decision process. In 2024, COACH helps a robot choose actions that teach a human partner cooperative skills.

  7. December 2025

    Open-world robot navigation

    In December 2025, he presents work on robot navigation in open environments as a Provost's Chair Professor and Director of the Smart Systems Institute at NUS. His team applies data-driven foundational models to robotics.

  8. As of October 2026

    NUS and NVIDIA appointments

    As of October 2026, he is a Provost's Chair Professor in NUS's Department of Computer Science and directs the Smart Systems Institute. He also directs NVIDIA Research Lab in Singapore. His research spans robotics and AI, including robot planning and learning under uncertainty, human-robot collaboration, and model-based planning with data-driven plan prediction for open-world robots.

Career

  1. Since 2026NVIDIADirector
  2. Since 2009National University of SingaporeAssociate Professor of Computer Science, Director
  3. 2022–2026Smart Systems Institute
  4. 2005–2008Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology
  5. 2002–2004University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Education

  1. University of British ColumbiaBSc in computer science and mathematics
  2. Stanford UniversityPhD in computer science

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

  1. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes David Hsu. We estimate that 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a company; 29% of moves starting at a university went to a company, and 76% ended the university role.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes David Hsu. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes NVIDIA. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes NVIDIA. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Robotics: Science and Systems IV - Online Proceedings roboticsproceedings.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Scaling Up POMDP Solvers for Robot Motion Planning Under Uncertainty ri.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. David HSU - NUS Computing comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. DESPOT: Online POMDP Planning with Regularization papers.nips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. 2018 IEEE RAS Fellow Class Announced ieee-ras.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Test of Time Award · Robotics: Science and Systems roboticsconference.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. NUS Computing profs and alumni win 2022 IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Award comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. A boost for AI research and education with NUSAIL and Rosetta news.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. COACH: Cooperative Robot Teaching proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. COACHing the Future: How Robots Are Revolutionising Learning comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. NUS GRTII Successfully Hosts the Greater Bay Area Science Forum 2025 Sub-Forum on Intelligent Systems and Industrial Innovation Applications! nusgrtii.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. IEEE ICRA 2026 | Keynote Sessions 2026.ieee-icra.org. Checked 21 October 2026.