Helen Greiner
CEO of CyPhy Works and Founder of iRobot

Commercializing Disruptive Technology

Ms. Greiner will speak about commercializing disruptive technology.   Using mobile robots as a specific example, she will talk about the challenges and pitfalls of taking research from the lab to the marketplace and make observations on getting disruptive technology to users (soldiers and consumers).  The talk will highlight new possibilities enabled by the current robotic successes. Ms Greiner will finish with thoughts on industry collaborations including the Robot Clusters in specific geographic regions and the Robotics Technology Consortium, of which she is serving as the elected President (www.roboticstechc.org).

Helen Greiner is CEO of CyPhy Works, Inc, a startup company whose mission is to be a “SkunkWorks” for robotics.  She is a co-founder of iRobot, a ~$300Million business and the global leader of practical robots. Ms Greiner served as President of iRobot until 2004, Chairman until October 2008, and currently serves on the iRobot Board.  While at iRobot, she developed the strategy for and led iRobot's entry into the military market place.  She served as the Principal Investigator on the DARPA program that created the original PackBot Tactical Mobile Robot, of which over 3,000 have now been deployed.  At iRobot, she helped create a culture of practical innovation and performance that led to the creation of the iRobot Warrior, PackBot EOD, SUGV, and successful participation in many other DARPA, Army and Navy research programs.  Ms. Greiner also ran iRobot's financing projects which included raising $35M venture capital and a $70M initial public offering.  Before starting her new venture, she led iRobot's investment in a deployable Flash LADAR and acquisition of Nekton, an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) company.  Greiner holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in computer science, both from MIT.  She was presented with an honorary PhD by WPI in 2009.
Ms. Greiner is highly decorated for her contributions in technology innovation and business leadership. She was named by the Kennedy School at Harvard in conjunction with the U.S. News and World Report as one of America's Best Leaders and was honored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) with the prestigious Pioneer Award. She has also been honored as a Technology Review Magazine "Innovator for the Next Century," invited to the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader of Tomorrow, and has been awarded the DEMO God Award at the DEMO Conference. In 2003, she was named one of the Ernst and Young New England Entrepreneurs of the Year and has been inducted in the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame. Her 20+ years of experience in robotic technology includes work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Ms. Greiner is a Trustee of the Boston Museum Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), Autonomous Unmanned Systems Vehicle International (AUVSI), the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MTLC), and the US Army War College Board of Visitors.  Ms. Greiner serves as the elected President and Board Member of the Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC) - a 180 member industrial/academic group.
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Bradley Nelson
Professor of Robotids and Intelligent Systems, ETH, Zürich.

Micro and Nano Robotos

Microrobotics has recently entered the phase in which sub-mm sized autonomous robots are being realized. While the potential impact of these devices on society is high, particularly for biomedical applications, many challenges remain in developing genuine microrobots that will be useful to society. This talk will focus on applications of microrobots as well as approaches to their locomotion in liquid and on solid surfaces. Issues in the design of external systems for providing energy and control of microrobots must be considered, and the use of externally generated magnetic fields in particular appears to be a promising strategy. Theoretical and experimental issues will be discussed, functionalization of the devices, and efforts to scale microrobots to the nanodomain will be presented.

Brad Nelson is the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zürich. His primary research focus is on microrobotics and nanorobotics with an emphasis on applications in biology and medicine. He received a B.S.M.E. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.S.M.E. from the University of Minnesota. He worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Motorola and served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana, Africa, before obtaining a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1995-1998) and an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota (1998-2002). He became a Full Professor at ETH Zürich in 2002.
Prof. Nelson has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship and is a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the McKnight Presidential Fellows Award, and the Bronze Tablet. He was elected as a Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2003 and 2008 and won Best Paper Awards at major robotics conferences and journals in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. He was named to the 2005 “Scientific American 50,” Scientific American magazine’s annual list recognizing fifty outstanding acts of leadership in science and technology from the past year for his efforts in nanotube manufacturing. His laboratory won the 2007 and 2009 RoboCup Nanogram Competition, both times the event has been held. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, has served as the head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering from 2005–2007, and is currently the Chairman of the ETH Electron Microscopy Center (EMEZ).
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