Biography:

Sebastian Thrun is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the Stanford AI Lab. His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence. Thrun has delivered numerous invited plenary presentations at leading conferences and symposia. He served as the inaugural general conference chair of Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2005. He was general conference chair of Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 2003 and Conference on Automated Learning and Discovery (CONALD) 1998, co-chair of the International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR) 2005, and program chair of NIPS 2002. He is a founding member of RSS and Vice President of the NIPS Foundation. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the winner of the Braunschweig Research Prize, and a member of the German Academy of Sciences in addition to numerous other prizes, best paper awards, and fellowships. In 2005, the Stanford Racing team led by him developed Stanley, the first robot to complete the DARPA Grand Challenge.