PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nitish Srivastava

Machine learning researcher Nitish Srivastava connects neural-network research with autonomous systems. He earned a computer science degree at IIT Kanpur in 2011, completed a PhD at the University of Toronto in 2017, and coauthored papers on dropout and video representation learning. He co-founded Clarevision Research and worked at Apple on embodied agents and autonomous perception before co-founding Vayu Robotics, whose 2024 delivery robot paired a mobility foundation model with passive sensing. Since August 2025, he is Senior Director of Autonomy at Serve Robotics; IIT Kanpur's alumni association named him among its 2026 Young Alumni Awardees.

Works
36
Citations
44,752
h-index
22
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2011–2017

    IIT Kanpur and a Toronto PhD

    He earns a BTech in computer science at IIT Kanpur in May 2011 and completes a computer science PhD at the University of Toronto in 2017. In Toronto's Machine Learning Group, he studies with Geoffrey Hinton and Ruslan Salakhutdinov.

  2. 2014

    The dropout method

    With Geoffrey Hinton, Alex Krizhevsky, Ilya Sutskever and Ruslan Salakhutdinov, he coauthors Dropout: A Simple Way to Prevent Neural Networks from Overfitting in 2014. The method randomly drops network units and their connections during training to reduce overfitting.

  3. 2015

    Video representations with LSTMs

    In 2015, with Elman Mansimov and Ruslan Salakhutdinov, he coauthors Unsupervised Learning of Video Representations using LSTMs. Its encoder-decoder model learns representations of video sequences and predicts future sequences.

  4. 2015–2016

    Clarevision for autonomous driving

    From 2015 to 2016, he co-founds Clarevision Research with Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Charlie Tang. The company develops perception neural networks for autonomous driving.

  5. 2017–2022

    Apple research and robotic control

    At Apple, he works as a Staff Research Scientist from 2017 to 2022, applying self-supervised and reinforcement learning to embodied agents and building perception models for autonomous technologies. In 2021, he coauthors Robust Robotic Control from Pixels Using Contrastive Recurrent State-Space Models; its recurrent model predicts the next observation and supports robot control under camera, background and color distractions.

  6. February 2022–August 2025

    Co-founding Vayu Robotics

    From February 2022 to August 2025, he serves as CTO and co-founder of Vayu Robotics. In October 2023, the company describes a foundation model for mobility and a low-cost sensing technology that could replace lidar in some mid-range applications; its March 2024 announcement identifies him as Vayu's CTO.

  7. July 2024

    Vayu's AI delivery robot

    In July 2024, Vayu debuts an on-road delivery robot that combines a transformer-based mobility foundation model with a passive sensor. The robot operates without lidar or pre-mapping the roads it will travel.

  8. Since August 2025

    Senior Director at Serve Robotics

    Since August 2025, he is Senior Director of Autonomy at Serve Robotics, where he leads the machine-learning team that builds intelligence for safe navigation in complex urban environments. The IIT Kanpur Alumni Association includes him among its Young Alumni Awardees in 2026.

Career

  1. Since 2025Serve RoboticsSenior Director of Autonomy
  2. From 2023Vayu RoboticsCo-founder, CTO
  3. 2022–2024Google
  4. 2017–2022AppleStaff Research Scientist
  5. 2017–2020Cornell University
  6. 2015–2016Clarevision ResearchCo-founder

Education

  1. 2011Indian Institute of Technology KanpurBachelor's degree in computer science
  2. University of TorontoPhD

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

Most-cited works

  1. Dropout: a simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting2014 · 33,412 citationsWith Alex Krizhevsky, Geoffrey Hinton and Ruslan Salakhutdinov
  2. Improving neural networks by preventing co-adaptation of feature detectors2012 · 6,382 citationsWith Alex Krizhevsky, Geoffrey Hinton and Ruslan Salakhutdinov
  3. Unsupervised Learning of Video Representations using LSTMs2015 · 1,865 citationsWith Ruslan Salakhutdinov
  4. Multimodal Learning with Deep Boltzmann Machines2012 · 1,049 citationsWith Ruslan Salakhutdinov
  5. Improving Neural Networks with Dropout2013 · 265 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Nitish Srivastava. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  2. 19% of people shaping AI who founded a dated organization have founded two or more, waiting a median of 7 years before a secondIncludes Nitish Srivastava. Across 1,136 people shaping AI who founded or co-founded a dated company, standalone lab or nonprofit, 221 (19%) founded at least two organizations, accounting for 36% of all 1,421 founding events.
  3. 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 each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Nitish Srivastava yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Nitish Srivastava cs.utoronto.ca. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. CV - Nitish Srivastava nitishsrivastava.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Dropout: A Simple Way to Prevent Neural Networks from Overfitting jmlr.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Unsupervised Learning of Video Representations using LSTMs arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. About me - Nitish Srivastava nitishsrivastava.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Robust Robotic Control from Pixels Using Contrastive Recurrent State-Space Models - Apple Machine Learning Research machinelearning.apple.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Vayu Robotics Emerges from Stealth with $12.7 Million in Seed Funding from Khosla Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures vayurobotics.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Vayu Robotics News vayurobotics.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Vayu Robotics debuts the world’s first on-road Delivery Robot powered by an AI Robotics foundation model vayurobotics.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Young Alumnus Awards iitkalumni.org. Checked 21 October 2026.