- This event has passed.
Spring 2026 GRASP Seminar: Vivan Amin, Microsoft Research, “From Labs to Last Mile: Bridging Physical AI Research and Real-World Deployment”
April 9 @ 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm
This event was in-person ONLY in Levine 307…
ABSTRACT
Physical AI is moving beyond pure exploration and into early experimentation, but a significant reliability gap still stands between research progress and general-purpose deployment. This talk examines the frontier challenges in embodied intelligence, from vision-language-action architectures such as CogAct, which separate cognition from action generation to compute-efficient training approaches such as FLOWER, as well as emerging directions in VLA+ (Rho-Alpha), world action models (PIDM), and video action models (Mimic) directions emerging from Microsoft Research.
The session will focus on why deployment now requires an end-to-end Physical AI toolchain: simulation and synthetic data, edge data capture, scalable training, evaluation, and repeatable deployment workflows. It will also highlight Microsoft’s recently introduced Azure Physical AI Toolchain, which connects physical assets, simulation, and cloud training into enterprise-grade pipelines designed to support the full simulate-train-evaluate-deploy lifecycle The talk offers a grounded view of where the field stands today, where the hardest open questions remain, and where academia-industry collaboration can have the greatest impact on reliable Physical AI deployment.
Presenter
Vivan Amin - Learn More
Vivan is a Research Incubations Director and Research TPM at Microsoft Research, where he leads cross-company efforts in Embodied and Physical AI. His work focuses on advancing research, incubation, and strategic partnerships that shape Microsoft’s approach to intelligent physical systems, robotics, and next-generation autonomous capabilities.
Before joining Microsoft Research, Vivan held leadership roles across Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. In Microsoft’s Office of the CTO, he led AI and robotics simulation initiatives for federal, aerospace, and industrial sectors, helping incubate autonomous systems and robotics solutions while developing go-to-market strategies and strategic partnerships. At Lockheed Martin, he led technical program teams within Mission Systems. At Boeing, he led Cyber and AI products within the Autonomous Systems business, advancing secure, intelligent capabilities for next-generation aerospace applications.
Vivan holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology and an MBA from Louisiana State University, along with executive education in Artificial Intelligence from UC Berkeley, Cybersecurity from MIT, and AI in Robotics from MIT CSAIL.