Brian Gerkey

Brian is currently the CTO at Intrinsic and the OSRF Board Chair. He was previously co-founder and CEO of OSRF, where for 10 years he led the team that was responsible for ROS, Gazebo, and Open-RMF. Brian has worked on the ROS project since 2008, contributing to the development and release of one of the most widely used robot software platforms in robotics research, education, and industry. He is also the founding and former lead developer on the open-source Player Project, a predecessor to ROS. For his work on Player and ROS, Brian was recognized by MIT Technology Review with the TR35 award and by Silicon Valley Business Journal with their 40 Under 40 award. He earned his PhD in Computer Science at USC.

Ryan Gariepy

Ryan Gariepy is co-founder and CTO of both Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors. Along with his involvement with Open Robotics, he co-founded and co-chairs the Canadian Robotics Council, is an advisor to several startups and venture capital groups, and helped found the Next Generation Manufacturing Canada initiative.

He is a regular speaker, panelist, and expert guest on topics including robotics, AI, and technology policy. Ryan completed both a B.A.Sc. degree in Mechatronics Engineering and a M.A.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and has over sixty pending patents in the field of intelligent systems.

Sabine Hauert

Sabine Hauert is Associate Professor of Swarm Engineering at University of Bristol. She leads a team of researchers working on making swarms for people, and across scales, from nanorobots for cancer treatment, to larger robots for environmental monitoring, or logistics. Many of her robots are powered by ROS. Before joining the University of Bristol, Sabine engineered swarms at MIT and EPFL. She’s involved in more than 30M GBP in grant funding and has served on national and international committees, including the UK Robotics Growth Partnership, the Royal Society Working Group on Machine Learning, and several IEEE boards. She is President and Executive Trustee of non-profits robohub.org and aihub.org, which connect the robotics and AI communities to the public. As an expert in science communication, she is often invited to speak with media and at conferences (over 50 invited talks).

Steve Cousins

Dr. Steve Cousins is the Chief Technology Officer of Relay Robotics. As founder and CEO of Savioke, he developed and deployed Relay – an autonomous delivery robot that works in human environments to help people. Steve was previously President and CEO of Willow Garage, and is a founding board member of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. Steve received the IEEE/IFR Award for Invention and Entrepreneurship in Robotics and Automation award in 2017. Steve’s PhD is from Stanford University, and his BS and MS computer science degrees are from Washington University.

Yuki Nakagawa

Yuki is the Founder and CEO at RT Corporation and has been involved in Japanese humanoid and home robotics for almost her entire career. Yuki is on the organizing committee of ROSCon JP, the local ROSCon for the Japanese ROS community, and has been involved in educational robots in Japan for many years. She started RT Corporation in 2005, a company that develops, sells, and trains university students and professional engineers about service robots, and became its representative director. RT is the official ROS supporter of Denso Wave COBOTTA. In 2020, she received the Strait of Magellan Award. In 2022, she was certified as a fellow of robot education and food robotics from the Robotics Society of Japan. Her company is one of the early adopters of ROS in Japan.

“I have not only been passionate about robots for almost my entire life, but equally passionate about teaching and training students and engineers about the promise of the robotics industry. I can’t imagine a better organization to join that will allow me to continue my efforts to grow the worldwide ROS community.” – Yuki Nakagawa, President and CEO, RT Corporation