Previous Speakers
Michael Skirpan
Michael Skirpan is a jointly appointed Assistant Teaching Faculty in Carnegie Mellon's Software and Societal Systems and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments. At CMU, he focuses on ethics education for engineers and computer scientists and does research on approaches to governing and auditing computer systems to comply with ethical standards. He is additionally the executive director of Community Forge, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit focused on economic justice and building lasting relationships across Pittsburgh between communities that are siloed and segregated. He's an award winning playwright and an experienced industry consultant.
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Geoffrey Hinton
Professor Geoffrey Hinton is a world-renowned computer scientist who has pioneered fields in artificial intelligence with his work. Receiving the Turing Award in 2018 for his work in deep learning alongside Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, they are referred to as the “Godfathers of Deep Learning.” After leaving Google in May 2023, he nows spends his time as a professor in the computer science department at the University of Toronto, and as an expert voice on understanding ethical issues in artificial intelligence.
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Steve Cousins
Dr. Steve Cousins is the Chief Technology Officer of Relay Robotics. As founder and CEO of Savioke, he developed and deployed Relay – an autonomous delivery robot that works in human environments to help people. Steve was previously President and CEO of Willow Garage, and is a founding board member of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. Steve received the IEEE/IFR Award for Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation award in 2017. His PhD is from Stanford University, and his BS and MS computer science degrees are from Washington University.
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Chris Urmson
Chris Urmson is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aurora. He is also a member of the Board of directors of Aurora. Prior to founding Aurora, Chris helped build Google’s self-driving program from 2009 to 2016 and served as Chief Technology Officer of the group. Chris has over 15 years of experience leading automated vehicle programs. He was the Director of Technology for Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Grand and Urban Challenge Teams, which placed second and third in 2005, and first in 2007. Chris earned his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and his BEng in Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba. Chris currently serves on Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science Dean’s Advisory Board as well as on the Board of Directors for Edge Case Research, a company working to assure the safety of autonomous systems for real world deployment. Additionally, he has served on the Shell New Energies External Advisory Board and has served on the Veoneer Technical Advisory Board. Chris has authored over 60 patents and over 50 publications.
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Marc Raibert
Dr. Marc Raibert is the executive director of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute. In this role, he drives The Institute's strategic roadmap and spearheads recruitment efforts to achieve the organization’s mission of developing technology that enables future generations of intelligent machines. Raibert also serves as the chairman of the board at Boston Dynamics, which he founded in 1992. A spin-off from MIT, Boston Dynamics is arguably the most influential pure-play robotics organization in the world, having produced robots such as BigDog, Atlas, Stretch, and Spot – the latter two are available for commercial purchase and used by organizations around the globe.
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Sanjiv Singh
Dr. Sanjiv Singh is an innovator, educator, and entrepreneur. He is currently a Consulting Professor at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and the CEO of Near Earth Autonomy, a start-up that develops autonomy for next-generation aircraft that will inspect infrastructure, deliver cargo, and transport people. He is the founding editor of Field Robotics, an open access journal, a TEDx speaker, and a co-founder of four companies.
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Manuela Veloso
Dr. Manuela M. Veloso is the firmwide Head of AI Research, which pursues fundamental research in areas of core relevance to financial services, including data mining and cryptography, machine learning, explainability, and human-AI interaction. The team partners with applied data analytics teams across the firm as well as with leading academic institutions globally.
Professor Veloso is on leave from Carnegie Mellon University as the Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science, and the past Head of the Machine Learning Department.
Professor Veloso is the Past President of AAAI, and the co-founder, Trustee, and Past President of RoboCup.
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Andrew Moore
Andrew W. Moore, PhD, is a distinguished computer scientist with expertise in machine learning and robotics. He became the Head of Google Cloud Artificial Intelligence division in January 2019. Moore previously worked at Google from 2006 to 2014 and was the founding director of Google’s Pittsburgh engineering office in 2006. He then spent a four-year hiatus at Carnegie Mellon University as the dean of the School of Computer Science.
Andrew’s research interests encompass the field of “big data” — applying statistical methods and mathematical formulas to massive quantities of information, ranging from web searches to astronomy to medical records, in order to identify patterns and extract meaning from that information. His past research has included improving the ability of robots and other automated systems to sense the world around them and respond appropriately.
Andrew lives in Pittsburgh.
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