Venkat ShastriFounder

United States - San Diego, California

Venkat Shastri is DeSanctis Professor of Engineering & Entrepreneurship, Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Director of Industry Partnerships at the University of San Diego Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering. He is also a co-Founder, the CEO and Director of ALZpath, Inc., the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Darroch Medical and a Director of Primo Energy. Until December 2015, he was Advisor to the CEO of PCN Technology, a position he took on after serving as President and CEO, and a Director of the company from 2006 - 2013. Before PCN, he was the VP of Engineering (2002-2004) at Palomar Technologies and Senior Director of Engineering (2000-2002) at KLA-Tencor. Between 1996-2001 he led the robotics program at SRI International. He was a consulting professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University between 1998 - 2000. From 1994-1996, Venkat was a visiting fellow at Yale University, which followed his tenure as Member of Technical Staff at JPL (1988-1994).

Venkat received his Ph.D. in Controls and Robotics from the University of Massachusetts in 1988 and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering, India in 1981. In addition to his industrial and entrepreneurial experience, he is an accomplished researcher. He is the author of a book entitled, ‘‘Dextrous Robot Hands,’’ (Springer-Verlag, 1990), and has published extensively in scientific journals and conferences. He has served in IEEE Society journal editorial boards and has been an editor of the Transactions on Robotics and Automation and International Journal of Robotics Research. He holds 4 patents in controls, robotics, Bio-MEMS, and artificial muscles.

Venkat's current interests are in Sustainability, Automation and Robotics.