Speakers and Panelists

Adrian Kaehler

Adrian Kaehler is the founder at Deep Learning Group and a board member of OpenCV. He is also former VP of Magic Leap.

In 2005, he was on the Stanford’s team winning the DARPA Grand Challenge, he designed the computer vision system on the team.





Anca Dragan, UC Berkeley

Anca Dragan is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley. She runs the InterACT (Interactive Autonomy and Collaborative Technologies) Lab, which focuses on the redesign of robotics algorithms for interaction and coordination with people.

Anca helped found and serves on the steering committee for the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, and is a co-Pi on the Center for Human-Compatible AI.





Wende Zhang, General Motors

Dr. Wende Zhang is GM’s BFO (BOM Family Owner) of Lidar Systems since June 2017, and BFO of View Systems in 2014-17. In addition, Wende leads GM’s Next Generation Perception Systems team, guiding a cross-functional global Engineering and R&D team focused on identifying next generation perception systems for automated driving and active safety since 2010.

Dr. Wende Zhang‘s research interests include Perception and Sensing for Automated Driving, Pattern Recognition, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Security, and Robotics.

Wende Zhang was the technical lead on computer vision and the embedded researcher in the GM-CMU autonomous driving team that won the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007. He has 100+ US patent applications and 35+ publications in sensing and viewing systems for automated driving and active safety. He won GM highest technical awards (Boss Kettering Award) with his team twice in both 2016 and 2017.

Jerry Yu, SAIC USA Innovation Center

Dr. Jerry Yu is Senior Manager of Autonomous Driving at SAIC USA Innovation Center.

Previously, he was Principal Scientist at Canon USA Innovation Center (2014-2016), Lead Computer Scientist at General Electric Global Research Center (2010-2014) and Research Scientist at Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories (2007-2010).

His technical interest includes Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Data Mining.





Junli Gu, Xiaopeng Motors

Dr. Junli Gu is vice president of Autonomous Driving at Xiaopeng Motors. She is an expert in the field of Machine Learning and Autonomous Driving.

Before Xiaopeng Motors, she was tech lead of Machine Learning at Tesla AutoPilot.



Chris Heiser, Renovo.auto

Chris Heiser is the co-founder and CEO of Renovo, leading the company’s development of software platforms to accelerate the innovation and adoption of automated mobility on-demand (AMoD) systems.

Renovo’s AWare operating system has most recently choosen by Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center Smart Machines Group in Samsung’s first fleet of test vehicles in California.





Anand Gopalan, Velodyne LiDAR

Dr. Anand Gopalan is Velodyne LiDAR's Chief Technology Officer.He is responsible for developing ASIC technology that will power Velodyne's next generation LIDAR products.





Jingao Wang, Baidu Apollo

Jingao Wang is the Head of the Apollo Platform and a Senior Director at Baidu. He has over 20 years of research and engineering experience with both small and large teams in automobile, autonomous driving, mobile OS. Before joining Baidu, he worked at Google and Bosch.





Lei Qi, SAIC Capital

Lei Qi works as an investor at SAIC Venture Capital. Her investment area focuses on the automotive industry in both China and the U.S.. In the past, she has lead the investments in well-known innovative startups such as Getaround, Vicarious, Deepmap, Tron.ai and Gur Energy Lab.

Kai Yu, Horizon Robotics

Dr. Kai Yu is the founder & CEO of Horizon Robotics Inc., a startup dedicated to developing embedded artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, integrating software algorithms and hardware chips, for autonomous driving cars, smart cameras, and other devices.

He led the R&D of AI at Baidu from April 2012 to June 2015. He founded Baidu IDL (Institute of Deep Learning), the very first and most renowned AI lab in China industry.

Jianxiong Xiao, AutoX

Jianxiong Xiao is the Founder and CEO of AutoX Inc., a high-tech startup working on A.I. software solution for self-driving vehicles.

AutoX's innovative camera-first self-driving solution amounts to only a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional LiDAR-based approaches. Dr. Xiao has over ten years of research and engineering experience in Computer Vision, Autonomous Driving, and Robotics.



Yibiao Zhao, iSee AI

Yibiao Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of iSee AI, a startup working on humanistic AI for autonomous driving. Yibiao completed his PhD at UCLA, studying computer vision, and his postdoc at MIT, studying cognitive robots. He is a pioneer of engineering common sense for visual understanding and cognitive robots, and he is the co-chair of the interdisciplinary workshop series at the CVPR and CogSci conferences.





Shahin Farshchi, Lux Capital





Shahin empowers entrepreneurs aiming to accelerate humanity towards a fantastic future through feats of engineering.

His recent investments at Lux Capital include Nervana(recently acquired by Intel), Planet Labs, Flex Logix, Relativity Space, Aeva, Mythic, and Zoox.





Junwei Bao, Innovusion

Bao Junwei is the CEO and founder of Innovusion. Innovusion makes high definition sensor and sensor fusion solutions for Autonomous Driving.

Before, he was the head of computing system and sensor of Baidu's autonomous driving division.





Wei Luo, DeepMap

Co-Founder and COO of DeepMap. She worked for 9+ years at Google, leading various product and engineering efforts, spanning from Google Earth, Google Maps, Geo Enterprise, Location Intelligence and more.

Maha Achour, Metawave

Dr. Maha Achour is CEO and co-founder of Metawave Corporation, a VC-backed startup focused on commercializing next generation radar sensors for the automotive market.

Previously, Maha served as CTO of Rayspan where she commercialized the first metamaterial antennas and RF front-end subsystems for the cellular and WLAN industries. She has pioneered the first Free-Space Optical systems for last-mile connectivity and has led various DARPA projects in wireless MIMO and Optical devices.

She has authored over 30 publications in electrical engineering and physics, and has more than 80 granted and pending patents.

Jon Mullen, Righthook.io

Jon Mullen is co-founder and CTO at RightHook. RightHook creates simulations to accelerate the delivery of safe autonomous systems.

And more to be announced...