Biographies

Sebastian Thrun
Professor Sebastian Thrun is Director of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he pursues research on machine learning and robotics. He is a founding member of Robotics Science and Systems and is Vice President of the Neural Information Processing System Foundation. Thrun was named one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant Ten" in 2005.

William "Red" Whittaker
William "Red" Whittaker is the Fredkin Professor of Robotics and Director of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also cofounder and Chief Scientist of RedZone Robotics. Whittaker has 16 patents and has authored or coauthored over 200 publications.

Ron Kurjanowicz
Ron Kurjanowicz is Chief of Staff for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), specializing in acquisition of new technologies for the United States Department of Defense. In 2005, he served as Program Manager for the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Wayt Gibbs
Wayt Gibbs has been a Senior Writer for Scientific American since 1998. He has authored over 210 bylined articles for the magazine, covering a wide range of science and technology issues. He lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.

Bruce Hall
Bruce Hall is a founding member of Team Digital Auto Drive, a research and development organization specializing in vision-recognition-based 3-D Imaging and navigational technologies. Team DAD is based in Morgan Hill, California.

Gary Schmiedel
Gary Schmiedel is Vice President of Advanced Product Engineering for Oshkosh Truck Corporation. He currently leads the TerraMax project and is working to create an autonomous version of an Oshkosh off-road vehicle originally designed for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Anthony Levandowski
Anthony Levandowski is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. He currently leads the Blue Team, a group comprised of graduate and undergraduate students working on an autonomous motorcycle.

Kevin Peterson
Kevin Peterson is a graduate student and electrical engineer at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, where he leads team "Sandstorm," the second of CMU's two entries into the Grand Challenge. His main interests are field robotics and planning.