Welcome to my website!
My name is Carmen and I am a Schmidt Science Fellow. I am affiliated with Prof. Marco Pavone's group at Stanford, where I work at the intersection of Control Theory and AI. To learn more about my research, head over to the Research tab!
Before joining Stanford, I spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the AI Center at ETH Zurich. I obtained a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from Caltech, where I worked under the advice of Prof. John Doyle. My research has been awarded the best Ph.D. dissertation of the year at Caltech2023 Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize, as well as with two IEEE best paper awards2024 Best Paper Award at IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems
2022 Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Control & Automation. My work has also been recognized for its interdisciplinary contributions2025 Rising Star in Brain and Cognitive Science (MIT)
2022 Rising Star in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (UT Austin)
2022 Rising Star in Cyber-Physical Systems (U Virginia) as well as its societal impact2025 Emerson Consequential Scholar
2025 Stanford Impact Labs Fellow. I am also very grateful for the multiple fellowships2024 Schmidt Science Fellowship
2023 ETH AI Center Postdoctoral Fellowship
2021 Amazon AI4Science Fellowship
2019 D. E. Shaw Exploration Fellowship that have partially funded my research.
I am very proud to be a member of the academic community. I am a strong believer that access to education is a fundamental right, and that an educated society is a more equitable and inclusive one. In my teaching and mentoring, I strive to create a welcoming and supportive environment2022 Fellow of the LEAP Alliance. Beyond academia, I also feel a strong responsibility to the broader public: I participate in outreach2023 Instructor for Clubes de Ciencia (Merida, Mexico) and science-policy2025 Engagement and Education Officer at Stanford Science Policy Group programs (check out my Teaching tab to learn more!). I am also committed to making my research accesible to anyone who is interested in learning about it. I upload presentations of my papers as Youtube videos for those who prefer watching over reading, and I always make myself available to discuss research: feel free to reach out!
News
I am on the academic job market! Please reach out if you think I could be a good fit for your department.
Our workshop on Large Language Models and Control will take place at the 64th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Rio de Janeiro!
We submitted 3 papers to ICLR 2026: (1) reachability of generative models, (2) design principles for sequence models, and (3) recommender systems in social network settings (preprints coming soon!).
I am honored to have been selected as a Fellow of the Stanford Impact Labs.
I had the pleasure of giving the keynote address at the NSF workshop “NeuroAI and Beyond” organized by Prof. Terrence Sejnowski in Washington, D.C.
Our work interfacing LLMs and robotics was presented at the Workshop on Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Robotics at RSS.
I am honored to have been selected to serve as the Engagement and Education Officer for Stanford Science Policy Group in the 2025-2026 academic year.
We submitted 1 paper to NeurIPS 2025 on state space models with novel brain-inspired dynamics.
I am honored to have been invited to the Rising Star Seminar in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT (awarded to three postdocs a year).
I am honored to have been invited to give a talk at the Natural Language Processing Group at the University of Cambridge.
We submitted 1 paper to CDC 2025 on the system level synthesis framework for affine systems.
I am honored to have been named an Emerson Consequential Scholar.
I had the pleasure to give 2 talks at the Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego: (1) on control theory meets natural language, and (2) on distributed and localized model predictive control.
I am honored to have been selected as a Member of the Future of Life Institute.
I join Stanford as a Schmidt Science Fellow!
We submitted 1 paper to ICLR 2025 on the skip connection as a feedforward controller.
Our workshop on Next Generation of Sequence Modeling Architectures will take place at the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning in Vienna!
We submitted 2 papers to NeurIPS 2024: (1) a dynamical systems comparison of sequence models, and (2) activation steering via optimal control.
We submitted 1 paper to CDC 2024 on a control-theoretic overview of state space models for AI.
We submitted 1 paper to IROS 2024 on interfacing natural language and robotics.
I join ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral fellow at the AI Center!
I am honored to have been featured in the IEEE Control Systems Magazine!
I had the pleasure to serve as an instructor for Clubes de Ciencia in Merida, Mexico. Check out the project website that the students put together!
I graduated from my Ph.D.! My thesis was recognized as the best Ph.D. dissertation of the year at Caltech!