Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

VP and Fellow, a Professor of Computer Science at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, and before that at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. At Google, he founded

Google X X Development LLC (formerly Google X) is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010, which now operates as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. X has its headquarters about a mile and a ...

and Google's self-driving car team. He is also an adjunct professor at Stanford University and at Georgia Tech. Thrun led development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005

DARPA Grand Challenge The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for American autonomous vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authoriz ...

, and which has since been placed on exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution's

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

. His team also developed a vehicle called Junior, which placed second at the

in 2007. Thrun led the development of the

Google self-driving car Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google. Waymo ope ...

. Thrun is also known for his work on probabilistic algorithms for robotics with applications including

robotic mapping Robotic mapping is a discipline related to computer vision and cartography. The goal for an autonomous robot is to be able to construct (or use) a map (outdoor use) or floor plan (indoor use) and to localize itself and its recharging bases or b ...

. In recognition of his contributions, and at the age of 39, he was elected into the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

and also into the

Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

in 2007. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' recognized him as one of 20 "fighters for

internet freedom Internet freedom is an umbrella term that encompasses digital rights, freedom of information, the right to Internet access, freedom from Internet censorship, and net neutrality. Some believe that Internet freedom is not a human right. They thin ...

Early life and education

Thrun was born in 1967 in Solingen, Germany (former

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...

), the son of Winfried and Kristin (Grüner) Thrun. He completed his ''

Vordiplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, ...

'' (intermediate examination) in computer science, economics, and medicine at the

University of Hildesheim The University of Hildesheim (in German ''Universität Hildesheim'') is a public university located in Hildesheim. History Alfeld University of Education (Pädagogische Hochschule Alfeld) - University of Hildesheim The University of Hildesh ...

in 1988. At the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

, he completed a ''

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, ...

'' (first degree) in 1993 and a Ph.D. (''summa cum laude'') in 1995 in computer science and statistics.

Career and research

In 1995 he joined the Computer Science Department at

(CMU) as a research computer scientist. In 1998 he became an assistant professor and co-director of the Robot Learning Laboratory at CMU. As a faculty member at CMU, he co-founded the Master's Program in Automated Learning and Discovery, which later would become a Ph.D. program in the broad area of machine learning and scientific discovery. In 2001 Thrun spent a sabbatical year at

. He returned to CMU to an endowed professorship, the

Finmeccanica Leonardo S.p.A., formerly Leonardo-Finmeccanica and originally Finmeccanica, is an Italian multinational company specialising in aerospace, defence and security. Headquartered in Rome, Italy, the company has 180 sites worldwide. It is the eighth ...

Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics. Thrun left CMU in July 2003 to become an associate professor at Stanford University and was appointed as the director of

SAIL A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails ma ...

in January 2004. From 2007–2011, Thrun was a full professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford. On April 1, 2011, Thrun relinquished his tenure at Stanford to join Google as a Google Fellow. On January 23, 2012, he co-founded an online private educational organization, Udacity. He was a Google VP and Fellow, and worked on development of the Google driverless car system. Thrun was interviewed in the 2018 documentary on artificial intelligence ''

Do You Trust This Computer? ''Do You Trust This Computer?'' is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Chris Paine that outlines the benefits and especially the dangers of artificial intelligence. It features interviews with a range of prominent individuals relevant to ...

''.

Robotics

Thrun developed a number of autonomous robotic systems that earned him international recognition. In 1994, he started the University of Bonn's Rhino project together with his doctoral thesis advisor Armin B. Cremers. In 1997 Thrun and his colleagues

Wolfram Burgard Wolfram Burgard (born 1961 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany) is a German roboticist. He is a full professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg where he heads the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. He is known for his substantial c ...

and

Dieter Fox Dieter Fox is a German-American roboticist and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. He received his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Bonn in 1998. He is most notable ...

developed the world's first robotic tour guide in the Deutsches Museum Bonn (1997). In 1998, the follow-up robot "Minerva" was installed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, where it guided tens of thousands of visitors during a two-week deployment period. Thrun went on to found the CMU/Pitt Nursebot project, which fielded an interactive humanoid robot in a nursing home near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2002, Thrun helped develop mine mapping robots in a project with his colleagues William L. Whittaker and Scott Thayer, research professors at Carnegie Mellon University. After his move to Stanford University in 2003, he engaged in the development of the robot Stanley, which in 2005 won the

. His former graduate student Michael Montemerlo, who was co-advised by William L. Whittaker, led the software development for this robot. In 2007, Thrun's robot "Junior" won second place in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Thrun joined

as part of a sabbatical, together with several Stanford students. At Google, he co-developed Google Street View. Thrun's best known contributions to robotics are on the theoretical end. He contributed to the area of probabilistic robotics, a field that marries

statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...

and

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

. He and his research group made substantial contributions in areas of mobile robot localization, mapping ( SLAM), and control. Probabilistic techniques have since become mainstream in robotics, and are used in numerous commercial applications. In the fall of 2005, Thrun published a textbook entitled ''Probabilistic Robotics'' together with his long-term co-workers

and

. Since 2007, a Japanese translation of Probabilistic Robotics has been available on the Japanese market. Thrun is one of the principal investors of the Stanford spin-off VectorMagic.

Awards

*Named one of Brilliant 5 by ''Popular Science'' in 2005 * CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, 1999—2003 *Olympus award, German Society for Pattern Recognition, 2001 *Fast Company: Fifth most creative person in 2011 *#4 on ''

Foreign Policy A state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterally or through ...

'' magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012 *Max-Planck-Research Award, 2011 *Inaugural AAAI Ed Feigenbaum Prize. Selected as the fifth most creative person in the business world by the ''Fast Company'' in 2011 *Thrun was the 2012 recipient of '' Smithsonian'' magazine's American Ingenuity Award in the Education category. *Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thrun, Sebastian 1967 births Living people Artificial intelligence researchers German computer scientists Machine learning researchers German roboticists People from Solingen American investors University of Bonn alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty West German expatriates in the United States Carnegie Mellon University faculty Google employees Google Fellows Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence