Chris Urmson

Chris Urmson is the co-founder and CEO of Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle technology company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Before establishing Aurora, he served as the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, which later became Waymo. He previously worked as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, where he earned his doctorate and helped lead the team that won the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Under his leadership, Aurora acquired Uber's Advanced Technologies Group in 2020 and completed a $13 billion public listing on the NASDAQ in 2021. The company has since secured strategic partnerships with Volvo Trucks and PACCAR to deploy commercial driverless freight operations on public roads in Texas. Urmson remains focused on the commercialization and scaling of artificial intelligence and robotics systems for the global transportation and logistics sectors.