Since the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004, the self-driving industry has made meaningful progress, but struggled to achieve commercial deployment. Building on the lessons of the last two decades, Raquel Urtasun is pioneering a radical AI-first approach to self-driving, starting with the trucking industry. In this presentation, Raquel unpacks the innovative AI-first approach needed to “drive” safely in the real world and bring the promise of self-driving closer to commercialization than ever before.

Raquel Urtasun, who completed her PhD in Computer Science at EPFL in 2006, is one of the most prominent figures in the self-driving vehicle industry. After leading Uber’s self-driving car division, in 2021 she founded her own company Waabi, an AI company building the next generation of self-driving technology. Raquel is also a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, co-founder of the Vector Institute for AI, and the recipient of several high profile awards including three Google Faculty Research Awards and an Amazon Faculty Research Award.