Brian Gerkey

Brian Gerkey

Open Robotics

United States

Research Areas

Multi Robot systems, Robots, Simulation and Animation, Software, Middleware and Programming Environments

Biography

Brian Gerkey is co-founder and CEO of Open Robotics, which drives the development and adoption of open software and hardware for robotics. Prior to Open Robotics, Brian was a postdoc in the Stanford AI Lab, a Computer Scientist in the SRI AI Center, and Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage. Brian is a strong believer in, frequent contributor to, and constant beneficiary of open source software. 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 in 2011 and by Silicon Valley Business Journal with their 40 Under 40 award in 2016. Brian received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2003, his M.S. in Computer Science from USC in 2000, and his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering, with a secondary major in Mathematics and a minor in Robotics and Automation, from Tulane University in 1998.