Dr. Danil Prokhorov started his research career in Russia. He studied system engineering which included courses in math, physics, mechatronics and computer technologies, as well as aerospace and robotics. He received his M.S. with Honors in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992. After receiving Ph.D. in 1997, he joined the staff of Ford Scientific Research Laboratory, Dearborn, Michigan. While at Ford he pursued machine learning research focusing on neural networks with applications to system modeling, powertrain control, diagnostics and optimization. He has been involved in research and planning for various intelligent technologies, such as highly automated vehicles, AI and other futuristic systems at Toyota Tech Center (TTC), Ann Arbor, MI since 2005. Since 2011 he is in charge of future research department in Toyota Motor North America R & D. He has been serving as a panel expert for NSF, DOE, ARPA, Senior and Associate Editor of several scientific journals for over 20 years. He has been involved with several professional societies including IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and IEEE Computational Intelligence (CI), as well as International Neural Network Society (INNS) as its former Board member, President and recently elected Fellow. He has authored lots of publications and patents. Having shown feasibility of autonomous driving and personal flying mobility, his department continues research of complex multi-disciplinary problems while exploring opportunities for the next big thing.
Dan Grossman has extensive experience successfully developing and transforming companies to achieve breakthrough results, competitive advantage and shareholder value. He has been a part of pioneering five global brands, three successful public offerings and has launched more than 100 new markets. Dan is currently Vice President, Global Microtransit Services at Ford Motor Company.
Prior to that Dan was the Chief Operations Officer for General Motors’ mobility team Maven, which he pioneered the creation of in September 2015. As COO, Dan launched and managed all new vehicle sharing and shared mobility business globally and over the first 2 years, he and his team launched 18 new markets with 6,500 cars and had more than 200MM miles driven over the company’s three mobility platforms.
Prior to joining Maven, Dan served as Vice President at Zipcar where he launched and led more than 60 markets and 4,000+ cars in the US and Canada with w/ direct P-L ownership for all operations.
Tarek El Dokor is the Founder and CEO of EDGE3 Technologies. He is one of the industry pioneers of the Vision Analytics using deep learning. He has been instrumental in the deployment of GPU-accelerated computing in Vision and AI dating back to 2007. He is also one of the original gesture recognition architects from the early 2000s. Recently, El Dokor was the architect of the Ambient Sensing Node for detecting children left behind in hot cars, which received the CES 2018 Innovation Award. Prior to EDGE3, El Dokor was a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Embry-Riddle Machine Vision Lab, having won numerous awards, including the 2007/2008 Honda Research Institute’s Researcher of the Year. El Dokor was also an NVIDIA Fellow and Micron Fellow, and has over 150 U.S. patents and patent applications. He founded his first company at 19 years of age and exited two years later.
Graduated from the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences in Germany in 2005 with a degree in Automotive Engineering – Mechatronics. Joined dSPACE GmbH in 2006 as an Application Engineer and later served as a Senior Application Engineer at the Stuttgart Project Center. In 2011 took on the role of ASM Field Application Engineer / Sales at the Paderborn office. In 2013 returned to the Stuttgart Project Center to take on the position of Lead Sales Manager (South-West Germany region). Since September of 2017 relocated to California, USA, to work for dSPACE Inc. as an Account Manager, responsible for customers in California
David Howarth is the Business Development Manager for IPG North America. David earned both a BS in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University. He has 30 years of experience in Software Development and technology deployment. He has been in the Automotive Industry for the past 15 years, including running the US division of ETAS (Bosch Group), with a focus on embedded software for Powertrain, Vehicle dynamics, and ADAS. David’s focus at IPG is working with US companies to improve their capabilities to utilize Virtual Vehicle Development, along with developing, simulating and testing of AV systems.
Ashley heads up what3words in the US from Silicon Valley, with a focus on developing global partnerships across the automotive, mobility, tech and logistics industries. She joined what3words in 2017 to build strategic partnerships, taking the lead of the Automotive and Mobility team soon after. Prior to what3words, Ashley spent nine years at CNN International, managing advertising sales across Africa and the Middle East from its London headquarters, with stint in the UAE. She started her career at HGTV (Scripps Networks) in NYC, where she spent almost three years on the advertising sales team. Outside of the office, Ashley can usually be found on a plane or at a mobility event, anywhere from Detroit to London to China! And when she has spare time, exploring California’s great outdoors with her husband.
Sue is Co-Founder/CEO of her second start-up in AI, Amika Mobile, focussed on public safety and security. Sue is a rare woman technology CEO who has a reputation for excellence and innovation. As CEO, she provides the vision for the company and its products, directs business strategy; ensuring product development matches customer pain points. Sue is also a key inventor and innovator of 30 international patents related to AI. Her first company, AmikaNow! was launched as a spin-off from NRC government R&D labs in 1998 and was focussed on AI and automatic content analysis. Its Compliance Business was acquired by Entrust for its secure messaging platform. Sue holds 30 International patents in automatic content analysis and critical and emergency communications. As many as 40 Global Companies have cited her pioneering patents including Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Ford, Blackberry, etc.
Gregory Haye, Local Motors Vice President of Product Management. Greg will lead the charge taking large scale polymer composite additive technology developed within LM Industries from validated materials, processes, and chassis to a validated road-going automotive product in 2019. As LM Industries’ General Manager and Director of Corporate Technology Partnerships, Greg was previously charged with overseeing the Local Motors Knoxville Research and Development operations and acted as a materials and process development expert for the company. His additional role focuses on building strategic partnerships or joint developments for LM Industries Corporate Research and Development.
Dinesh C is the Chief Creative Officer of CarVi where he oversees all product and business development initiatives with the aim of bringing together global partners in offering affordable and impressively design upgrades to today’s cars with safety technology and connectivity and turning data into intelligence for future autonomous vehicles.
With a successful track record of over 15+ years in establishing and managing global businesses, Dinesh believes in success through passion and creativity. He is also a technically savvy, highly driven and an award-winning global marketing and technical professional.
With an exceptional ability to identify and connect with the right customers and partners, Dinesh moves ideas to fruition, optimizes market penetration, and motivates teams to be surpass goals. His creativity and drive in starting and expanding a company, coupled with intimate business knowledge, allows him to build emotional attachment with customers and partners. By combining strong technical and business skills with outstanding visuals, Dinesh brings creative approaches to startups and established businesses.
Versatile, high-energy executive with 15+ years' experience leading global connected consumer product and service innovation, new business model creation, and go-to-market initiatives leveraging strategic partners. Inspires product teams to innovate at speed, ideating, designing, developing, marketing, and selling visionary services, focused at the intersection of customer experience, connected IoT, analytics and AI/ML
Alexei brings to Autotech a long track record of investing in hard science startups related to both hardware and software, and he enjoys working with companies that build competitive barriers to entry via fundamental IP or strong network effects. Previously, Alexei was a Managing Director of NY-based VC firm Harris & Harris Group, leading their Silicon Valley office. Prior to H&H, he was at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), contributing to their VC investments in advanced manufacturing, quantum computing, and alternative energy. Dr. Andreev earned his MBA from Stanford, his PhD in Solid State Physics from Moscow Steel & Alloys Institute, and completed coursework for MA in Liberal Sciences from Dartmouth. In his free time, he enjoys studying quantum mechanics, playing basketball, windsurfing, and surrealist artwork. Alexei's current portfolio includes Outdoorsy, Cogniac, HDVI, Rollick, Work Truck Solutions, ShipHawk, SpotHero, Volta Charging, and XNOR.AI. Previously Dr. Andreev served as a board director or observer of Adesto Technologies (NASDAQ:IOTS), Xradia (acq. by Zeiss), NeoPhotonics (NYSE:NPTN) and Molecular Imprints (acq. Canon and Magic Leap).
Skilled in Enterprise Solution Architecture design, Data Operationalization, Data Security, Privacy Protection, Cloud/Data/AI Strategy, Cloud Vendor Selection, running RFP/RFQ related Decision Analysis along with procurement team, Machine Learning & Road-map development for business and EA alignment including realization and implementation of CCPA, GDPR & PIPEDA requirements.
Dr. Danil Prokhorov started his research career in Russia. He studied system engineering which included courses in math, physics, mechatronics and computer technologies, as well as aerospace and robotics. He received his M.S. with Honors in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992. After receiving Ph.D. in 1997, he joined the staff of Ford Scientific Research Laboratory, Dearborn, Michigan. While at Ford he pursued machine learning research focusing on neural networks with applications to system modeling, powertrain control, diagnostics and optimization. He has been involved in research and planning for various intelligent technologies, such as highly automated vehicles, AI and other futuristic systems at Toyota Tech Center (TTC), Ann Arbor, MI since 2005. Since 2011 he is in charge of future research department in Toyota Motor North America R & D. He has been serving as a panel expert for NSF, DOE, ARPA, Senior and Associate Editor of several scientific journals for over 20 years. He has been involved with several professional societies including IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and IEEE Computational Intelligence (CI), as well as International Neural Network Society (INNS) as its former Board member, President and recently elected Fellow. He has authored lots of publications and patents. Having shown feasibility of autonomous driving and personal flying mobility, his department continues research of complex multi-disciplinary problems while exploring opportunities for the next big thing.
Sharad is a highly accomplished Senior Executive and Board Advisor with 17 years of success in transit, motor coach charter, bus manufacturing, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). His broad areas of expertise include strategic planning; operations management; business analysis and planning; P&L and financial management; lead gen; sales operations and management; process improvement; change management; supply chain; transportation network carriers (TNC); and fleet management.
In his executive career, Sharad has held leadership positions at FirstGroup; First Transit; Bus and Coach International; Pronaia Capital; Windy City Limousines LLC; TMS-Qatar; Colonial Coach Lines; JRS Companies; and General Mills. He is a strategy-active executive using emerging technology and alternative business models to drive effective innovation, cost savings, market segmentation, partnerships, operations, workforce structures, procurement, sales, revenue generation, and rapid growth. As Group Director of Innovation of a $10B passenger transportation company, Sharad led immediate and long term autonomous vehicle (AV) strategy to verify and implement the technology profitably for commercial and public passenger transport solutions – while building, expanding, and strengthening strategic partnerships for AV applications across paratransit, student transport, and numerous mobility startup companies.
Sharad joined Easy Mile in April 2018 as Senior Vice President to lead the talented and team deploying driverless 15 passenger shuttles across North America.
Vienna Harvey works in the School of Autonomous Systems at Udacity, where she manages the flagship Self-Driving Car Engineer nanodegree program. As a certified autonomous vehicle test operator, she has tested code from over a thousand Udacity students on the company’s self-driving car, Carla. Vienna graduated from Stanford University in 2016 with a degree in Science, Technology, and Society, after writing an award-winning honors thesis on ethics and autonomous vehicles. Today, she continues to be interested in the ethical, legal, societal, and design challenges posed by autonomous mobility and how this emerging technology will shape our world
Gaurav currently is the Head of Autonomous Driving at Ola which is a leading ride-sharing company in India and expanding internationally. Before this role, he lead product management for NVIDIA Autonomous Driving SDK “DriveWorks”. Previously he has held business development, marketing and engineering leadership roles at Texas Instruments. Gaurav did his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical engineering and has several publications in the area of image processing and computer vision and holds two US patents.
Michael Bakunin is heading Mobility Services Partnerships for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance with Silicon Valley based partners. His objective is to support the Alliance’s strategy of becoming an early provider of driverless vehicles and services. Prior to Michael’s assignment in the Silicon Valley office he has been involved in a number of projects related to electric vehicles and e-mobility at Nissan in Europe and Japan. The new vehicle is engineered on a shared global A-segment platform and will be introduced in 2019. In the new business development role at Nissan Europe Michael launched the first vehicle-to-grid (V2G) revenue generating project in Denmark and established partnerships with energy companies. Michael is also a founding and advisory board member of a corporate car-sharing start-up RCI Mobility operating Nissan and Renault fleets in Europe.
Lisa Whalen is Global Vice President, Automotive & Transportation at MarketsandMarkets. In her role, she collaborates with automotive industry stakeholders to formulate growth strategies. She has managed several hundred research, analytical, and consulting projects and reports, including customer and product research; sales performance and forecasting; competitor intelligence insights; product planning; product, powertrain and technology roll-out plans; business, brand and marketing strategy development and serves as a thought leader on megatrends and their impact on the future of mobility.
Prior to her tenure at MarketsandMarkets, Lisa worked for Frost & Sullivan, General Motors in three global regions (North America, Asia and Europe) and J.D. Power and Associates. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Michigan State University and a Master’s from the University of Michigan.
Steven Atneosen is the Managing Director of Grand Chasm Ventures and helps early stage technology companies grow and legacy companies innovate in the sustainability, mobility and health industries with a focus on AI and distributed systems/blockchain. His career spans over 20 years’ growing disruptive technology companies in the mobility, health and gaming industries as leadership in the C-suite. He also serves as a mentor at StartX (Stanford) and SkyDeck (Berkeley) accelerators.
From 2016 to September 2018, he was Vice President of Corporate Development for a division of NIO, the Shanghai based electric mobility company, and led business and product strategy for XPT, culminating in NIO’s IPO (NYSE: NIO). Prior to NIO, Steven was SVP, Corporate Development, General Counsel and Secretary for StayWell Health Management, accountable for StayWell’s product and partner strategy until StayWell was merged with Krames and later acquired by Merck.
Tarek El Dokor is the Founder and CEO of EDGE3 Technologies. He is one of the industry pioneers of the Vision Analytics using deep learning. He has been instrumental in the deployment of GPU-accelerated computing in Vision and AI dating back to 2007. He is also one of the original gesture recognition architects from the early 2000s. Recently, El Dokor was the architect of the Ambient Sensing Node for detecting children left behind in hot cars, which received the CES 2018 Innovation Award. Prior to EDGE3, El Dokor was a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Embry-Riddle Machine Vision Lab, having won numerous awards, including the 2007/2008 Honda Research Institute’s Researcher of the Year. El Dokor was also an NVIDIA Fellow and Micron Fellow, and has over 150 U.S. patents and patent applications. He founded his first company at 19 years of age and exited two years later.
Dan Grossman has extensive experience successfully developing and transforming companies to achieve breakthrough results, competitive advantage and shareholder value. He has been a part of pioneering five global brands, three successful public offerings and has launched more than 100 new markets. Dan is currently Vice President, Global Microtransit Services at Ford Motor Company.
Prior to that Dan was the Chief Operations Officer for General Motors’ mobility team Maven, which he pioneered the creation of in September 2015. As COO, Dan launched and managed all new vehicle sharing and shared mobility business globally and over the first 2 years, he and his team launched 18 new markets with 6,500 cars and had more than 200MM miles driven over the company’s three mobility platforms.
Prior to joining Maven, Dan served as Vice President at Zipcar where he launched and led more than 60 markets and 4,000+ cars in the US and Canada with w/ direct P-L ownership for all operations.
