Lakshmi Nair

Lakshmi Nair joined Flagship Pioneering in 2024 as a Senior Machine Learning Scientist for Pioneering Intelligence. Her research is dedicated to advancing intelligent and creative AI agents through innovative ML approaches.

Lakshmi brings years of multi-disciplinary expertise encompassing large generative models, robotics, edge devices, and healthcare. Before joining Flagship, Lakshmi was a Machine Learning Scientist at Lightmatter Inc. where she spearheaded research on innovative large-language and vision-language models adapted for photonics devices and supported the creation of one of the first light-based computing devices for machine learning. During her graduate studies, Lakshmi explored creative problem-solving in robots using multi-modal machine learning, achieving the first practical demonstration of creative capabilities in physical robots.

Lakshmi earned her Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Tech under the guidance of Professor Sonia Chernova. She has served on the program committee for top robotics and AI conferences, including AAAI, ICRA, and RSS. She also holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India.