Self-Driven Women
Building a community of women developing the future of mobility
Our most recent event:
Watch our virtual event with the female engineering leaders of Waymo as they talk about some of the toughest and most interesting problems in ML and robotics that they are working on and how that enables building a scalable autonomous driving tech stack at Waymo.
Speakers
Head of Behavior Prediction at Waymo
Shilpa Gulati has been interested in building robot brains to improve human well-being since she was in her teens. She leads the Behavior Prediction team at Waymo that develops algorithms to predict the future actions of other users, such as other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. This is one of the key technologies comprising an autonomous vehicle’s “brain”. Prior to that, she led a team of engineers in autonomous systems at Apple, and before that, she worked in autonomous driving at Robert Bosch LLC. Earlier in her career, at Stone Aerospace, Shilpa was part of a NASA-funded project to develop a platform for testing technologies for discovery of life on Europa, Jupiter's moon. There, she wrote navigation algorithms for an autonomous underwater vehicle and spent several weeks testing it in the Antarctic Dry Valleys in 2008 and 2009. Shilpa has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Software Engineer and Manager at Waymo, Planner
Allison Thackston leads a Planner Reasoning team at Waymo, solving some of the toughest problems in autonomous driving technology. Prior to working at Waymo, she worked at Nuro and held the position of Engineering Lead and Manager of the Shared Autonomy Robotics team at Toyota Research Institute. She has also worked as the Lead Manipulation Researcher/Project Manager at Toyota Partner Robotics Group where she investigated robust task and motion planning manipulation strategies in unstructured environments. Before that, she was the Lead Engineer for Robotic Perception on Robonaut 2, the first humanoid robot on the International Space Station. Allison has degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering.
Director of Engineering at Waymo, Perception
Congcong Li is a Director of Engineering at Waymo where she leads a team in Perception that develops solutions to understand the semantics of objects and the holistic scene as well as delivering tools to improve data efficiency and quality throughout the entire Waymo data funnel. Prior to that, Congcong worked at Google to develop image understanding algorithms to improve Google products such as Image Search and Photos. Congcong has been excelled in the fields of computer vision and machine learning, with 20+ papers in top conferences and journals and 1000+ citations. Congcong holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and a M.S. in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. and M.S. in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University.
Head of Behavior Prediction at Waymo
Shilpa Gulati has been interested in building robot brains to improve human well-being since she was in her teens. She leads the Behavior Prediction team at Waymo that develops algorithms to predict the future actions of other users, such as other vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians. This is one of the key technologies comprising an autonomous vehicle’s “brain”. Prior to that, she led a team of engineers in autonomous systems at Apple, and before that, she worked in autonomous driving at Robert Bosch LLC. Earlier in her career, at Stone Aerospace, Shilpa was part of a NASA-funded project to develop a platform for testing technologies for discovery of life on Europa, Jupiter's moon. There, she wrote navigation algorithms for an autonomous underwater vehicle and spent several weeks testing it in the Antarctic Dry Valleys in 2008 and 2009. Shilpa has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Software Engineer and Manager at Waymo, Planner
Allison Thackston leads a Planner Reasoning team at Waymo, solving some of the toughest problems in autonomous driving technology. Prior to working at Waymo, she worked at Nuro and held the position of Engineering Lead and Manager of the Shared Autonomy Robotics team at Toyota Research Institute. She has also worked as the Lead Manipulation Researcher/Project Manager at Toyota Partner Robotics Group where she investigated robust task and motion planning manipulation strategies in unstructured environments. Before that, she was the Lead Engineer for Robotic Perception on Robonaut 2, the first humanoid robot on the International Space Station. Allison has degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering.
Director of Engineering at Waymo, Perception
Congcong Li is a Director of Engineering at Waymo where she leads a team in Perception that develops solutions to understand the semantics of objects and the holistic scene as well as delivering tools to improve data efficiency and quality throughout the entire Waymo data funnel. Prior to that, Congcong worked at Google to develop image understanding algorithms to improve Google products such as Image Search and Photos. Congcong has been excelled in the fields of computer vision and machine learning, with 20+ papers in top conferences and journals and 1000+ citations. Congcong holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and a M.S. in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. and M.S. in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University.
Our Discussions
Watch our panel of influential women working in autonomous driving technology and mobility discuss their experiences being a mentor, receiving mentorship, the role it’s played in their careers, and tips on cultivating a mentorship.
Self-Driven Women: Opportunities and Challenges for Women Working in the Mobility Industry
Waymo COO Tekedra Mawakwana moderated a panel discussion with three inspiring female leaders in transportation and mobility as part of our inaugural #SelfDrivenWomen virtual event. In this video, they share their career stories, the challenges they’ve faced, the lessons they’ve learned to overcome them, and answer questions from attendees.
Driving Conversations: Women of Waymo
At Waymo, we are committed to addressing inequality, and we believe listening is a critical first step toward driving positive change. Earlier this year, five Waymonauts sat down to share their thoughts on equity at work, challenging the status quo, and more. This is what they had to say.
Self-Driven Women: Engineering the future of autonomy
Watch our virtual event with the female engineering leaders of Waymo as they talk about some of the toughest and most interesting problems in ML and robotics that they are working on and how that enables building a scalable autonomous driving tech stack at Waymo.
Women in Mobility: The Power of Mentorship
Watch our panel of influential women working in autonomous driving technology and mobility discuss their experiences being a mentor, receiving mentorship, the role it’s played in their careers, and tips on cultivating a mentorship.
Sharing our safety framework for fully autonomous operations
Now that we’ve opened up our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to the public, we’re also sharing in detail the safety framework that explains the processes we use to drive fully autonomously on public roads and validate the safety of our operations.
In the cab with the Waymo Driver: How trucks help advance our self-driving technology
In 2017, after nearly a decade of developing self-driving technology for passenger cars, we launched our trucking and local delivery program now known as Waymo Via. Since then, our autonomous Class 8 trucks have been tested in a wide variety of cities and environments in California, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Utilizing the same core technology stack across all of our vehicles allows us to bring fully driverless trucks to the market safely and quickly.