Dr. Mykel Kochenderfer is a leading researcher in decision-making systems for safety-critical applications, with work that has shaped how both aerospace and AI industries handle uncertainty at scale. At Terra AI, Mykel draws on his research in decision-making under uncertainty to help guide the rigor and reliability of the company's probabilistic subsurface models.

Mykel is Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and by courtesy, of Computer Science, at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL). His research focuses on algorithms and analytical methods for building robust decision-making systems under uncertainty, with applications spanning air traffic control, autonomous vehicles, and other safety-critical domains. Before joining Stanford's faculty in 2013, he worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where his research on aircraft collision avoidance led to the creation of ACAS X, the international standard for manned and unmanned aircraft collision avoidance. He is also a co-director of Stanford Mineral X, co-director of Stanford's Center for AI Safety, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), and an outside academic expert advising BlackRock's AI Labs on statistics, machine learning, and optimization.

Mykel holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh.