Ken Goldberg Bio
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Twitter: @Ken_Goldberg

Website: goldberg.berkeley.edu

Email: goldberg berkeley.edu

Very Short Bio: Ken Goldberg is the William S. Floyd Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley and an award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, artist and popular public speaker on AI and robotics.


Short (100 words):
Ken Goldberg is the William S. Floyd Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley and an award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, artist and popular public speaker on AI and robotics. Ken trains the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs in his research lab at UC Berkeley; he has published over 300 papers, 3 books, and holds 9 US Patents. Ken’s artwork has been featured in 70 art exhibits including the 2000 Whitney Biennial. He is a pioneer in technology and artistic visual expression, bridging the “two cultures” of art and science. With unique skills in communication and creative problem solving, invention, and thinking on the edge, Ken has presented over 600 invited lectures at events around the world.

More (200 words):
Ken has been interested in robots, rockets, and rebels since he was a kid. He’s skeptical about claims that humans are on the verge of being replaced by Superintelligent machines yet optimistic about the potential of technology to improve the human condition. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithm for part feeding and the first robot on the Internet. In 1995 he was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship and in 2005 was elected IEEE Fellow: "For contributions to networked telerobotics and geometric algorithms for automation." Ken founded UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture public lecture series in 1997 serves on the Advisory Board of the RoboGlobal Exchange Traded Fund. Ken is Chief Scientist at Ambidextrous Robotics and on the Editorial Board of the journal Science Robotics. He served as Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department and co-founded the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. Short documentary films he co-wrote were selected for Sundance and one was nominated for an Emmy Award. He lives in the Bay Area and is madly in love with his wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain, and their two daughters.


TL;DR (Too Long Don't Read)
Ken Goldberg is the William S. Floyd Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley and an award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, and artist. He holds secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information and the Dept of Radiation Oncology, The University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). He is Director of the CITRIS "People and Robots" Initiative with over 60 affiliated UC faculty, and Director of the UC Berkeley AUTOLAB, where he supervises 30 postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students pursuing research in Robotics, Automation, and Social Information Filtering for warehouses, homes, and operating rooms. Ken has published over 300 papers, 3 books, and holds 9 US Patents. Ken’s artwork has been featured in 70 art exhibits including the 2000 Whitney Biennial. He is a pioneer in technology and artistic visual expression, bridging the “two cultures” of art and science. With unique skills in communication and creativeproblem solving, invention, and thinking on the edge, he has presented over 600 keynote and invited lectures at events such as the World Economic Forum, Aspen Ideas Festival, Zeitgeist, TEDx, SXSW, and at Cisco, Fujitsu, Google, General Electric, Intel, Samsung, Siemens, Tata, and Vodefone. Ken earned dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and MS and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995. Ken has held visiting positions at San Francisco Art Institute and MIT Media Lab and his knowledge of sports remains approximately zero. Ken developed the first provably complete algorithms for part feeding and the first robot on the Internet. He co-founded and served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). He is also Co-Founder of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab, the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the African Robotics Network (AFRON), the Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics (CAL-MR), the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative (DDI), Hybrid Wisdom Labs, Moxie Institute, and Ambidextrous Robotics. Ken's artwork, closely linked with his research, has appeared in over 70 venues including the Whitney Biennial, San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum, Pompidou Center, Buenos Aires Biennial, Berkeley Art Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, and the ICC in Tokyo. Ken co-wrote three award-winning Sundance documentary films, "The Tribe", "Yelp", and "Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology" and co-directed the Emmy-Nominated Short Doc "Why We Love Robots." Ken's Ballet Mori was performed by the SF Ballet at the San Francisco Opera House to commemorate the 1906 Earthquake. Ken is Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series and is represented by the Catharine Clark Art Gallery. His Erdos-Bacon number is 6. Ken was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995 by Bill Clinton, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005, and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016. (goldberg.berkeley.edu @Ken_Goldberg)

goldberg@berkeley.edu (Twitter: @Ken_Goldberg)