Dr inż. Karolina Nowak
Associate Professor and Director of the BBQ HPC & Robotics Facility. Researching automated theorem proving, neural-network formal verification, and certified robotics control.
Dr inż. Karolina Nowak
Head of Autonomous Systems & Formal Verification Lab (ASFV Lab)
Department of Computer Science & Intelligent Systems · Autonomous Systems & Formal Verification Lab (ASFV Lab)
Academic Biography
Dr inż. Karolina Nowak is an Associate Professor at BBQ Institute of Advanced Science & Technology. She received her engineering degree and Ph.D. from the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics at the University of Warsaw (MIMUW), with a doctoral research stay at Inria Paris (Antique team).
Her research investigates mathematical methods for guaranteeing the safety, correctness, and stability of AI-driven autonomous systems. Dr. Nowak’s laboratory builds sound verification tools that interface automated theorem provers (SMT/SAT provers) with high-dimensional neural network state estimators.
Laboratory & Experimental Facilities
Dr. Nowak oversees the BBQ Autonomous Systems & Robotics Testing Ground located in the CeNT facility basement, equipped with precision optical motion-capture systems (Vicon) and custom autonomous terrestrial rovers for experimental verification of certified control policies.
Key Responsibilities & Leadership
- Leading research in safety-critical autonomous systems and certified neural controllers.
- Technical oversight of the BBQ Institute GPU Cluster and Robotics Testbed.
- Program Committee member for CAV (Computer Aided Verification) and TACAS.
- Principal Investigator for NCBR Applied Research Initiative on Safe Robotic Systems.
Research Interests
- Formal Methods & Automated Theorem Proving (Coq, Isabelle/HOL)
- Certified Neural Network Invariants & Reachability Analysis
- Safe Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robotics
- Real-Time Embedded Systems with Verifiable Guarantees
Teaching & Courses
- Formal Verification of Software and Neural Systems (CS-612)
- Autonomous Robotics and Real-Time Control (CS-518)
- Logic in Computer Science (CS-302)
Selected Recent Publications
- Nowak, K., Kowalczyk, J. (2026). Certified Reachability Guarantees for Deep Robotic Controllers. IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO).
- Nowak, K., Zieliński, A. (2025). Sound Neuro-Symbolic Model Checking via Differentiable SMT. CAV 2025 (LNCS Springer).
- Nowak, K. (2024). Exact Polyhedral Invariant Generation for Autonomous Agents. Formal Methods in System Design.
Office Hours & Student Advising
- Office hours: Mondays 11:00–13:00 (Room 1.15).
- Keynote speaker at the European Conference on Machine Intelligence (ECMI 2026).