PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Victoria Chibuogu Nneji

Victoria Chibuogu Nneji is a roboticist who studies how human operators and automation work together in transportation systems, from freight rail and airline dispatch to on-demand air taxis. Born in Nigeria and raised in Durham, North Carolina, she earned a B.S. in applied mathematics from Columbia University in 2014 and a Ph.D. in Robotics from Duke University in 2019, working in the Humans & Autonomy Lab. Her papers include a 2016 study of trust between students and robots and 2017 and 2018 papers on on-demand passenger air transportation with NASA Langley's Kenneth Goodrich. In 2019, she joined the Self-Driving Safety and Responsibility board that advised Uber's autonomous vehicle program, and in 2021 she joined the safety advisory board of Aurora Innovation. She is the founder of AKALAKA, a North Carolina social venture that supports family care partners.

Now at
AKALAKA
Badges

Timeline

  1. By 2014

    Columbia mathematics degree

    Born in Nigeria, she moves to the United States at age 5 and grows up in Durham, North Carolina. At Columbia University she studies applied mathematics under Adam Sobel and earns a B.S. in 2014.

  2. 2015–2017

    Duke master's degrees

    At Duke University she earns an M.Eng. in engineering management in 2015 and an M.S. in mechanical engineering in 2017. Her thesis, "Simulator of Human Operator Workload: Design, Validation & Analysis for Freight Rail Operations," is reviewed by a committee that includes Nilay Argon, Missy Cummings, Daniel Egger and George Konidaris.

  3. 2016

    A human-robot trust study

    She coauthors "Tell Me More: Designing HRI to Encourage More Trust, Disclosure, and Companionship" in 2016 with Nikolas Martelaro, Wendy Ju and Pamela Hinds, presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. In the study, high school students trust vulnerable robots more and talk more with expressive robots.

  4. 2017–2018

    On-demand air taxi research

    In 2017, she coauthors "Exploring Concepts of Operations for On-Demand Passenger Air Transportation" with Alexander Stimpson, Mary Cummings and Kenneth Goodrich of NASA Langley Research Center; the paper projects that the technology and regulatory framework for on-demand passenger air travel will need a decade or more. A 2018 AIAA paper by the same four authors covers functional requirements for remotely managing fleets of on-demand passenger aircraft.

  5. 2018–2019

    A Duke robotics doctorate

    A 2018 paper on railroad dispatcher workload, coauthored with Huang and Cummings, carries the Best Paper Award in Human Performance Modeling. In 2019, she earns a Ph.D. in Robotics at Duke as a research lead in the Humans & Autonomy Lab, with a dissertation titled "A Workload Model for Designing & Staffing Future Transportation Network Operations."

  6. 2019–2021

    Uber's self-driving safety board

    In 2019, while a robotics fellow and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Duke, she joins the Self-Driving Safety and Responsibility board, which reviews and advises on Uber's autonomous vehicle development. In 2021, she also joins the safety advisory board of Aurora Innovation.

  7. August 2020

    Lead engineer at Edge Case

    In August 2020, she is Lead Engineer & Innovation Strategist at Edge Case Research and speaks at an AIAA webinar on entrepreneurship. Her work has included airline, railroad and future on-demand autonomous air taxi operations.

  8. As of October 2026

    Founder of AKALAKA

    She is the founder of AKALAKA, a North Carolina social venture and Certified B Corporation that trains Certified Peer Facilitators to support family care partners. A design scientist, she builds the venture on her complex systems engineering background. The name comes from the Igbo language of her birthplace in Nigeria, where akalaka translates literally to "handprint" and figuratively to "destiny."

Career

  1. NowAKALAKAFounder
  2. From 2021Aurora InnovationSafety Advisory Board Member
  3. From 2020Edge Case ResearchLead Engineer & Innovation Strategist
  4. 2019–2021UberBoard Member
  5. Duke UniversityResearch Lead

Education

  1. 2017Duke UniversityM.Eng.; M.S.
  2. 2014Columbia UniversityB.S.

From the biography.

  1. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes Uber. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes Uber. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Duke University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Duke University. 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.

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 Victoria Chibuogu Nneji yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Victoria Chibuogu Nneji - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Abridged CV - Victoria Chibuogu Nneji, Ph.D. victorianneji.github.io. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Sergey Brin building humanitarian blimp for lifesaving leisure theregister.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Aerospace Career Pathways – Entrepreneurship (Member Exclusive Webinar) aiaa.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Uber Establishes Oversight Board for Self-driving Development thetruthaboutcars.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. About Our Ecosystem | Handle Life Together - AKALAKA akalaka.org. Checked 20 October 2026.