Grace Ra Kim

PhD Candidate

I’m a PhD candidate in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at Stanford University, working with Professor Mykel Kochenderfer in the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory. My research spans autonomous decision-making for space systems, from robust precomputed autonomy for deep-space missions like the Enceladus Orbilander with NASA Ames to satellite conjunction and collision avoidance, space traffic management, and related questions in public policy. Much of my work focuses on developing decision-making methods for safer and more reliable operation in uncertain and increasingly congested space environments.

A large portion of my research is motivated by my direct experience building spacecraft hardware. As chief engineer of the Harvard Satellite Team, I led the initial team that designed, built, and launched HUCSat, a 2U CubeSat selected through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, launched in April 2026 from Cape Canaveral, FL. I’ve also worked as a Payload Mechanical Engineering Intern at SpaceX, where I designed flight hardware currently flown on Starlink V2 Mini satellites.

Before Stanford, I earned a B.S. in Engineering Sciences at Harvard and an M.Phil in Advanced Computer Science at Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar. Broadly, I’m interested in making space systems more autonomous, reliable, and safe, and in developing the technical and policy frameworks needed to operate responsibly in space.