Event schedule

Uwe Franke Head of Image Understanding, Daimler AG

Uwe Franke received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany, in 1988 for his work on content based image coding. Since 1989 he has been with Daimler Research and Development and has been constantly working on the development of vision based driver assistance systems. He developed Daimler’s lane departure warning system introduced in 2000. Since 2000 he has been head of Daimler’s Image Understanding Group. The stereo technology developed by his group is the basis for the Mercedes Benz stereo camera system introduced in 2013. Recent work is on image understanding for autonomous driving, in particular Deep Neural Networks. He was nominated for the “Deutscher Zukunftspreis”, Germany’s most prestigious award for Technology and Innovation given by the German President and awarded the Karl-Heinz Beckurts Prize 2012.

Wendy Ju Executive Director, Center for Design Research, Stanford University

Wendy Ju is Executive Director of Interaction Design Research at Stanford University's Center for Design Research. Wendys research investigates novel human-machine interaction, particularly human-robot interaction and autonomous car interfaces. Since receiving her PhD from Stanford in 2008, Wendy has been innovating curriculum at the intersection of technology, design and the arts. At CDR, Wendy aims to increase awareness and appreciation for the role of Design Research and to make the Bay Area the epicenter for design intellectualism and discourse. She is also Associate Professor of Interaction Design in the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Associate Professor in the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts.

David Dao , Mercedes-Benz Research

David is a PhD student at ETH Zurich, working on Deep Reinforcement Learning. Before joining Mercedes-Benz Research, he was a graduate student at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a visiting researcher at CERN.

Arah Go , Mercedes-Benz Research

Arah Go is with the Communications and Public Relations team at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development. She holds a degree in Communications and Media Studies from UC Berkeley and enjoys long walks to the fridge at night.

Richard Gruner , Mercedes-Benz Research

As an engineer at Mercedes-Benz in Sunnyvale Richard is interested in bringing self-driving cars on the road with the power of machine learning. He got his tech skills and passion for entrepreneurship during his studies in Munich, Vancouver, and Paris.