Robotics Engineer · Physical AI · HRI

I build the systems.
I question
why they exist.

Robotics engineer and researcher specializing in Physical AI, embodied systems, and human-robot interaction. Admitted, M.S. Robotics at Northeastern (Fall 2026). 3+ years building on-device AI systems for real-world deployment: humanoid robots, NVIDIA Jetson, IRB-approved HRI studies.

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Ishita Pai Raikar

Education

Admitted, M.S. Robotics, Northeastern University
Boston, Fall 2026
B.S. Computer Engineering, NC State

3+
years building multimodal AI systems in robotics and assistive technology
6+
research contributions across HRI, physiological AI, and ethics
20
IRB-approved HRI sessions, 50+ annotated segments
"

What is AI? Merely technological — or existential too? An extension of human intelligence, or its replacement? I bring my curiosity, my learning, and my lived experience to bear on that question.

On curiosity as compass

About

Not just an engineer.
A translator.

I grew up across India, Singapore, and the US. Those places shaped a core belief: technology is not simply a tool. It interacts with language, habits, culture, and trust.

"Entrepreneurship is the mapping of the world's abstractions into real, tangible change."

My mentor Phaedra Boinodiris calls it translation fluency: moving between technical and public understanding with intention. With engineers I lead with failure modes. With non-technical audiences I lead with outcomes. I switch on purpose.

National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges Scholar · RSA Fellow, UK (2024) · $34,000 across 8 competitive research terms · 2nd Place, IEEE SoutheastCon Ethics Competition

translator Ishita 🤖 Researcher 💃 Artist 🎙 Speaker 👑 Pageantry 🌏 Advocate 🧠 Strategist

Hover each circle to learn more

Hover a node

Six identities. One translator.

Each circle is a genuine part of how I think and work.

"

I still remember that day. It was my sweet 16 birthday, and here I was folding and organising clothes for a school drive I had planned and led. I realised I was doing this for self-fulfilment, rather than for fame or recognition.

On service as north star

Experience

Where I've built things.

Jun 2026 to present

Research Assistant

TRUST Lab · Duke University · Dr. Brinnae Bent

  • Building end-to-end SFT and RL pipeline to reduce sycophancy in LLMs, training Llama and Qwen via LoRA and GRPO with asymmetric reward shaping and LLM-as-judge evaluation.

Feb 2026 to present

AI Strategy Intern

Future World Alliance

  • Translated cohort impact into funder-facing positioning; created 2 original AI ethics and governance series (19 episodes) across script, visual direction, and platform strategy.

May 2025 to Apr 2026

Research Intern

Empathic Computing Lab · University of Auckland · Dr. Mark Billinghurst

  • Built standardized annotation infrastructure across 4 signal modalities; designed multimodal emotion recognition pipeline for 2 manuscripts aligned with Maori Data Sovereignty principles.

May 2022 to Oct 2025

Robotics Research Assistant

Neurocomputational Ethics Research Group · NC State · Dr. Lobaton and Dr. Dubljević

  • Deployed full-stack embodied AI on SoftBank Pepper achieving ~4s latency with zero cloud dependency, integrating Whisper ASR and Ollama-hosted LLMs on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin.
  • Designed 20 IRB-approved sessions with older adults with MCI; 50+ annotated segments, 3 failure patterns fed into system redesign.

2024–2025

Gardian: AI-Powered Garden Protection Robot

Engineering Entrepreneurship Senior Design

  • 85% on-device animal detection accuracy via Edge Impulse ML on ESP32-CAM; led team of 4 as CEO through 3 prototype iterations.

2020–2022

Founder & Director

GlobeUplift · Global Youth-Led Nonprofit

  • Founded at 16; scaled to 50+ ambassadors across 6 countries and 3,000+ social media followers through campaigns spanning education, sustainability, and equity.
  • Hosted Learn@GlobeUplift interview series during COVID-19, featuring the Director of Google Search and a BBC-accredited environmentalist.
  • Mobilized community initiatives that reached 600+ frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic.
↗ View resume or request full CV
"

Old ways are not going to open new doors for us. In the presence of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), we need to start cultivating change as part of our culture. That is where the real magic is created.

On leading in a VUCA world · TEDxYouth at Dover Court International School, 2020

"

Shifting from disruption-anxious to disruption-embracing is 🗝️ to true innovation.

Research

Where the
work lives.

Systems that work for real people, in real conditions, with real constraints on privacy and compute. The hard part of robotics is not the robot. It is trust.

Anchor research · NC State · 2022-2025

Embodied social AI for older adults with mild cognitive impairment

SoftBank Pepper on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin. Whisper ASR, Ollama-hosted LLMs. Zero cloud. 20 IRB-approved sessions, EDA physiological signal capture, 3 recurring failure patterns fed back into system redesign.

20
participants, IRB-approved
~4s
end-to-end latency
0
cloud dependencies

"What should I say so it understands?"

A participant · the question that defines the HRI design problem
Study session

On-device pipeline · NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin

Real-time · ~4s speech to robot response

01Voice Activity Detectionwebrtcvad
02Audio TranscriptionWhisper ASR
03Prompt ConstructionQ + A + sentiment
04Sentiment Classificationheuristic + phi-3mini
05Contextual ResponseLLM via Ollama
06Speech + GesturePepper via SSH

Each turn updates the next prompt

Reinforcement Learning

Reducing sycophancy in LLMs via RL

Duke TRUST Lab · 2026

Multimodal AI

Emotion recognition grounded in Maori Data Sovereignty

University of Auckland · 2025-2026

AI Ethics

Public narratives in autonomous systems ethics

NC State · 2022-2023

2 published · 2 under review · 1 book chapter under review · 3 in preparation across HRI, assistive robotics, physiological AI, and ethics.

Request full CV ↗
"

Through this exploration representing dance choreography through mathematical models, I was able to showcase the blend of problem-solving and artistic thinking. It was fascinating to see an aesthetic dance form embodying mathematical themes.

On dance and mathematics · IB Mathematics Internal Assessment

Technical skills

The toolkit.

AI and ML

LLM pipelinesAgentic AIReinforcement LearningDeep RLWorld ModelsMultimodal System DesignWhisper ASRRAGPyTorchSignal Processingtorchaudiolibrosa

Physical AI and Robotics

Humanoid RoboticsHuman-Robot InteractionROSNVIDIA Isaac SimMuJoCoNVIDIA Jetson AGX OrinOn-device InferenceSensor FusionManipulationLocomotionSim-to-Real TransferAssistive RoboticsEmbodied AI

Tools

PythonCC++GitDockerAgileAnnotation InfrastructureEvaluation PipelinesModel Benchmarking

Responsible AI

Ethical AI GovernanceSafety-Critical System DesignIRB-Approved Study DesignCross-Cultural AIPolicy CommunicationHuman-Subject Research Protocols
"

"Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam": the whole world is one family. These practised beliefs make terms like discrimination and exclusion feel alien to me. My culture gives me my strength and my purpose.

On Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Speaking and Governance

Bringing complex ideas
into the room.

AI Governance Consulting

I help organizations answer two questions:
Are we building the right AI, and are we building AI right?

Through structured workshops, I help teams identify stakeholders, map potential impacts and risks, determine which governance principles matter most for a specific use case, and establish clear accountability through RACI frameworks.

For organizations deploying or procuring AI, I develop governance blueprints: requirements, audit processes, escalation pathways, disclosure standards, and vendor accountability mechanisms. Recent focus: healthcare and public sector AI.

Approach informed by mentorship from Phaedra Boinodiris, IBM Consulting's Responsible AI Leader.

Discuss a governance project

Past engagements

2020
What Kind of World Will We Be Living in the Future?
TEDxYouth Dover Court International School, Singapore · 100+ audience · Published on TED.com
TEDx Talk
2024
AI Revolution: EthicsQuest Across Disciplines ↗
NC State + Future World Alliance + 15+ institutional partners · Series host and moderator
Series host
2025
Beyond the Algorithm: Thinking Critically, Leading Boldly, and Thriving in an AI-Driven World
SparkNC · The Exchange 2025 · UNC Wilmington · Statewide event for ambitious NC high school students in AI, cybersecurity, and software development
Keynote
2025
Leading the AI Revolution: Ethical Leadership in a VUCA World
The William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, NC State · Why Students Must Drive the Future
Guest Speaker
2025
Panel Moderator · AI, Ethics, Industry and Academia
National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges Scholars Program Network Annual Meeting, NC State
Moderator
2026
Smart Maps, Smarter AI: Who's Leading?
NC State Data Science & AI Academy · Moderator
Moderator
Invite me to speak
"

A pageant and a research conference in the same week. The skills turned out to be the same: precision, presence, and the willingness to be seen. What I learned is that the ramp you stand on does not define you. The ideas you carry onto it do.

On being a polymath

Future World Alliance

AI education for the
people left out of the room.

Future World Alliance is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a single thesis: the ability to create with AI should belong to everyone, especially those the future has too often left behind.

As AI Strategy Intern, I translated cohort impact into funder-facing positioning, created original AI ethics and governance content series, and shaped the narrative that makes FWA's mission legible to partners and funders.

FWA's model rests on a principle I hold deeply: you don't learn to build with AI by watching. You learn by building.

121
learners across 18 countries
73%
community participation rate
189
projects shipped in 4 weeks
19
episodes across 2 original AI ethics series

Funder positioning

Turning cohort data into narrative

Surfaced the 48% AI Launchpad completion rate against industry benchmarks and built the data story that makes FWA's impact legible to institutional partners.

Content creation

19 episodes across 2 original series

Script, visual direction, and platform strategy end to end. AI ethics and governance made accessible to non-technical audiences.

EthicsQuest

Host, AI Revolution panel series ↗

15+ institutional partners, co-created with NC State's Data Science Academy, featuring Dean Yannis Yortsos.

Panel event
"

When collective consciousness shifts, great transformations are inevitable. We choose hope over helplessness in the presence of escalating issues within our communities.

On GlobeUplift and collective action

Press

As seen in.

NC State ECEBuilding a Community↗ NC State EntrepreneurshipInnovation at the Intersection of People and Technology↗ NC State ECEMultifaceted Summer: Research, Entrepreneurship, and Advocacy↗ TED.comWhat Kind of World Will We Be Living in the Future?↗ Exceptional UndergradsInnovate and Inspire: Building Bridges Between Fields↗ Cal Poly EngineeringAI Ethics Panel Series↗
"

Depth comes from doing. You have to work on hard problems in the real world to think of anything worth thinking about. Thought is downstream of life.

On the last human moat · April 2026

Contact

Let's build something
that matters.

Weighing an M.S. in Robotics at Northeastern (Fall 2026) against full-time roles in Physical AI and Robotics — open to the path that accelerates the work most. Also considering internship, co-op, or part-time roles, and open to conversations across research, speaking, governance, and mentorship.

Internships & Co-ops

Physical AI, Embodied AI, Human-Robot Interaction, on-device inference, assistive robotics, multimodal sensing.

Speaking and keynotes

AI ethics, governance, embodied AI, equity, translation fluency, the polymath identity.

AI governance consulting

Stakeholder mapping, RACI frameworks, governance blueprints, audit processes. Healthcare and public sector focus.

Mentorship

Students navigating research, fellowships, early-career AI. Especially cross-disciplinary paths.

✉ishita.pairaikar@gmail.com↗ inlinkedin.com/in/ishita-pai-raikar↗ ghgithub.com/ishitapairaikar↗ TEDTEDx talk↗
Graduation
✕