ROBO GLOBAL INDEXES

Dr. Henrik I. Christensen is the Qualcomm Chancellor’s Chair of Robot Systems and a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, UC San Diego. He is also the director of the Contextual Robotics Institute. 

He is an academic doing research on robotics and artificial intelligence, the main editor of the US National Robotics Roadmap, and an entrepreneur. He has co-founded multiple companies including Robust.AI, Christensen Consulting Group, AeroScan, and Intelligent Machines. He is also engaged in investments in publicly traded companies and start-ups through companies such as ROBO Global (co-founder) and Spring Mountain Capital (advisor). 

Dr. Christensen does research on robotics and AI, with an emphasis on a systems view to problems. The research has been published in 350+ contributions across AI, Computer Vision, and Robotics. The research has been adopted by companies such as Electrolux, ABB, KUKA, Weda, BMW, Boeing, iRobot, PerMobil, General Motors, … He serves as a consultant to agencies and companies across four continents. 

One of the world's foremost leaders in robotics and machine learning, Raffaello D'Andrea is the founder and CEO of Verity, providers of the world's first fully autonomous indoor drone systems, and a professor of dynamic systems and control at ETH Zurich. In 2003, he co-founded Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) and co-created the Kiva system, a mobile robotic material handling and order fulfillment solution that dramatically advanced warehouse order fulfillment for e-commerce.

In 2014, Raffaello founded Verity and began developing the inventory tracking system that is now in use by industry leaders such as DSV, Ingka, and Performance Team-A Maersk Company. In 2020, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering. His popular TED Talks and research videos have garnered tens of millions of views, providing an inspiring view into the world of engineering, robotics,  and computer science.

Ken Goldberg is a Professor and Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at UC Berkeley, and he has secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice at the School of Information, and in Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School. He is also the Director of the CITRIS “People and Robots” Initiative and the UC Berkeley AUTOLAB where he and his students pursue research in geometric algorithms and machine learning for robotics and automation in surgery, manufacturing, and other applications.

Ken has more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and 8 US Patents. He co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Ken was awarded the NSF PECASE (Presidential Faculty Fellowship) from President Bill Clinton in 1995, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005, and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016. Ken is an active member of the ROBO Global Strategic Advisory Board.

As president of SRI International, Manish Kothari, Ph.D., jointly develops SRI strategy with the CEO and oversees SRI Ventures, Global Partnerships, Marketing and Communications, and SRI’s Japan office.

SRI has been at the forefront of many innovations over the last 75 years, including the mouse, Siri, and the world’s most successful robotics company – Intuitive Surgical. Over the last decade, several SRI ventures have been acquired by the likes of Google, Apple, AT&T and many others.

Prior to his role at SRI, Dr. Kothari co-founded and ran multiple startups, largely at the intersection of AI, NLP and advanced image processing as applied to healthcare. He holds multiple patents and is the author or co-author of several peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. 

Kothari received his M.S. degree and Ph.D. in biomechanical engineering from Cornell University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. His Bachelor of Technology degree in aerospace engineering (summa cum laude) is from the Indian Institute of Technology.

Wyatt Newman is a leading researcher in the areas of mechatronics, robotics and computational intelligence, in which he has 12 patents and over 130 technical publications. After earning degrees from Harvard College, MIT and Columbia University, he was named an NSF Young Investigator in robotics, and subsequently was named a Herbold Fellow, a Tau Beta Pi “distinguished engineer,” a Woody-Flowers FIRST-robotics mentor awardee, and a CWRU awardee for teaching and for leadership. In 2007, he led “Team Case” in the DARPA Urban Challenge, involving autonomous vehicles operating among live and robotic traffic.

In addition to visiting appointments at Sandia Labs, NASA, and Princeton, Wyatt has held international appointments at Philips (Eindhoven, The Netherlands), as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at U. Edinburgh, and The Hung Hing Ying Distinguished Visiting Professor at U. of Hong Kong. Prof.  He also led HKU’s team in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, involving humanoid robots for disaster response.

Wyatt is an active member of the ROBO Global Strategic Advisory Board.

Illah R. Nourbakhsh is K&L Gates Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, inaugural Executive Director of the Center for Shared Prosperity, and co-director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab. He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.

In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences named him a Kavli Fellow. In 2013 he was inducted into the June Harless West Virginia Hall of Fame. He was previously Robotics Group Lead for NASA/Ames during the MER landings. In 2019 he was named a Hastings Fellow. He has co-authored textbooks and popular literature, including Robot Futures. He is a trustee of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, Winchester Thurston School and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. He is an active member of the R OBO Global Strategic Advisory Board.

Daniela Rus is the Director of CSAIL at MIT. She serves as the Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center and is a member of the science advisory board of the Toyota Research Institute.

Rus’s research interests are in robotics and artificial intelligence. The recipient of the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association, she is also a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Daniela earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University and is an active member of the ROBO Global Strategic Advisory Board.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Duke University and studying Mandarin at Nanjing University, Louis joined the French Army where he served as a second lieutenant in a mountain infantry battalion. After leaving the army, he worked as a financial analyst with Paribas in Paris and Hong Kong. He then launched Gavekal Research with Charles Gave and Anatole Kaletsky in London in 1999.

Since 2002,  Louis-Vincent has been based in Hong Kong where he oversees Gavekal’s money management business and contributes to the firm’s research. He has written seven books. The latest, Avoiding the Punch, was published in August 2021.  He is an active member of the ROBO Global  Strategic Advisory Board.

Morten Paulsen is the Head of Research and a Managing Director at CLSA Japan. He has covered the Japanese robotics and machinery industry as a Tokyo-based equity analyst since 1999. Morten was among the first financial analysts to highlight the Asian Automation trend as an underlying driver for the sector over a decade ago, and he has built strong relationships with automation equipment suppliers and system integrators across Asia.

Morten joined CLSA Japan from WestLB Securities Pacific in 2003, and he has received numerous rewards for his research. He was ranked number-one in his field by AsiaMoney every year from 2007 to 2013 (the segment was discontinued in 2014), and he was ranked by Starmine as one of Japan’s top 10 stock pickers in 2013. Morten is an active member of the ROBO Global Strategic Advisory Board.

Jeremie Capron joined ROBO Global in 2017 with more than ten years of experience as an equity research analyst in Asia, Europe, and the United States, with a focus on industrial technology.

Most recently, Jeremie led CLSA’s industrial research out of New York. For the prior seven years he served as a Senior Research Analyst with CLSA in Singapore and Japan, receiving a No.1 stock picker award from Nikkei/Starmine and ranking No.1 for Japan Materials Research in Asiamoney Brokers’ Poll for three consecutive years. Earlier in his career, he was a project manager with Veolia Environment in Europe and Asia.

Jeremie is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter holder, holds a Master’s Degree in Science and Executive Engineering from the École des Mines de Paris, and holds FINRA series 7, 63, 87 licenses. He is fluent in French and Japanese.

Zeno brings nearly a decade of experience in research, due diligence, growth strategy, and partnership development across enterprise SaaS, healthcare, artificial intelligence and blockchain. He currently resides in Palo Alto, California after living in New York City for seven years. 

Prior to ROBO Global, Zeno worked at Bluemont Partners as a Principal Consultant supporting clients across numerous industries and stages with fundraising, growth and partner strategy, research, due diligence and project management. 

Prior to Bluemont, Zeno worked in enterprise SaaS at Transperfect, the world’s largest provider of language and LegalTech services, and HighQ, a London-based enterprise collaboration SaaS company acquired by Thompson Reuters. In these roles he helped build out cross-selling capabilities, integrating new AI and security technologies, conducted go-to market research and strategy work, and honed product design for clients in private equity, venture capital and Fortune 500. 

Zeno started his career in Investor Relations and Portfolio Monitoring at Stepstone Group, a global private markets firm with over $100 billion in AUM covering venture capital, growth equity, real assets and large buyout strategies. Zeno graduated from the University of Tennessee Gary Rollins College of Business.

Bill Studebaker joined the ROBO Global team in 2015 after more than 20 years in capital markets and investment management. For more than a decade, he served as a portfolio manager at Apex Capital where he covered industrials and the economies of supply chain management. Earlier in his career, he held a number of positions at Merrill Lynch, including as a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and as a director in institutional equity sales, and he was an analyst in the structured finance group of Cargill.

Bill received his BA in Political Science and International Relations (double major) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Richard Lightbound joined ROBO Global in 2014. In addition to managing daily operations in Europe and Asia, he is responsible for executing the firm’s global business strategy.  

Richard has worked for 15+ years within the financial services sector with Wells Fargo and Standard Chartered Bank in senior management positions with responsibility for Institutional and Corporate clients across Europe, MENA and Asia. He enjoyed a 7-year break from banking to join an early cloud computing company funded by Warburg Pincus (now part of Infor) where he launched and managed operations across Asia and Europe. 

A frequent speaker at Robotics & Automation conferences and events, he has lived and worked in Hong Kong, USA, Europe, and Sri Lanka. 

Brad joined Robo Global in March of 2018 as Chief Technology Officer and Director of Operations. Prior to joining Robo, he spent the previous 16 years at Smith Group Asset Management, a Dallas-based investment advisor, where he was the head of the firm’s technology, software development, and trading operations and a member of the quantitative research team. 

Brad earned a BBA in Finance from the University of Texas at Arlington, graduating Summa Cum Laude.  He was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 2004 and is a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society of Dallas-Ft. Worth. 

Erin was recruited to the ROBO Global team after adding impressive value as a consultant with iris Concise in Atlanta. In her role as Director at Concise, she partnered with clients to drive the commercial performance of leading brands such as IHG, Shell, and Zaxby’s, as well as ROBO Global. Prior to joining Concise, she worked in NYC developing integrated marketing campaigns designed to drive awareness, brand love, and customer retention in the retail space.   

Erin holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and a BS in Business and International Studies from Wake Forest University. 

Axel Belorde joined ROBO Global in 2021 from data & analytics company Palantir Technologies where he was responsible for building new commercial partnerships. Axel worked with customer operational and technical leadership as well as data engineering teams to best leverage Palantir Foundry’s analytics and AI capabilities to solve operational business problems.  Prior to Palantir, Axel spent 7 years in investment management in London at hedge fund investor Liongate Capital, BlackRock and LGIM. Axel joined LGIM, UK’s largest investment management firm, in 2015 and led the provision of investment solutions to private banks, asset managers, wealth managers and other organisations across French speaking Europe and Italy.

Axel is an MSc in Management & CEMS graduate from the London School of Economics (LSE) and HEC Paris. He also holds an MSc in International Relations from the LSE and an Institut d’Etudes Politiques degree in France. Axel has followed the executive programme on Artificial intelligence at MIT. Axel is a dual French – British national, originally from Brittany, and speaks Italian.