Nathalie Hager

Nathalie’s love for robots started with her first encounter with humanoids in 7th grade during "Girls Day”, which included a visit to the FUmanoids, a robotic soccer team at the Free University of Berlin. Inspired by these, she build her own LEGO Mindstorm as a humanoid and developed its software accordingly. As she was eager to learn from the original FUmanoids, she interned at the laboratory in secondary school. She later went back to FU Berlin to join the Autonomous Research Laboratory, where she worked with the team on the self-driving car MiG (“Made in Germany”). After coming to Columbia, Nathalie joined the “Creative Machines Lab” during Summer 2018 where she worked on the robot evolution project. She is currently continuing this work during her second academic year at Columbia.

Besides her passion for Computer Science, Nathalie also has a strong love for animals. She combined these two and spent several months during her gap year in Namibia doing conservation work at a wildlife sanctuary. There, she joined a research team and tracked big cats such as leopards and cheetahs through footprint detection and GPS technology in order to solve human-wildlife conflicts.

Nathalie loves to travel and to explore new countries and cultures, and enjoys running and dancing. She is involved in the Columbia Space Initiative, where she currently co-leads the Blue Origin Infinity Mission. Go CSI!