UC Berkeley Professor Pieter Abbeel reflects on the determination and curiosity that has propelled former students from his robotics labs to extraordinary achievements.
By Anne Brice
August 21, 2026
When Aravind Srinivas arrived at UC Berkeley in 2020 hoping to join Pieter Abbeel’s robotics lab, he encountered an immediate obstacle: The lab was already full.
Undeterred, Srinivas proposed that he and Abeel work together for six months so he could prove himself. What followed was such a prolific stretch of research that Abbeel found himself repeatedly asking about his new student’s well-being.
