Dr. Stephen Smith

Dr. Stephen Smith is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo where he directs the Autonomous Systems Laboratory. He is a Canada Research Chair in Autonomous Systems and a faculty affiliate with the Vector Institute in Toronto. He has been involved with several startups in robotics and transportation, including RideCo, Swap Robotics,

and Veerio Robotics. Dr. Smith was a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. Prior to his postdoctoral studies, he completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), his Master's at the University of Toronto, and his B.Sc. at Queen's University, Kingston. Currently, Dr. Smith is an Associate Editor for both the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and the IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and his research group focuses on control, learning and optimization for autonomous systems and robotics. Through his research, he works on making robots more capable and easier to work with, focusing on robot motion planning, optimization, and multi-robot coordination. You can read more about Dr. Smith regarding his research and teachings through this web link: https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~sl2smith/