The Waymo Way: Making Autonomous Driving a Reality

Abstract: CSE alum Dmitri Dolgov is the co-CEO and a technical co-founder of Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to be the world’s most trusted driver. In his Homecoming Lecture, Dmitri will talk about his journey from the University of Michigan to building and scaling one of the most challenging and impactful technologies of our days. Waymo’s autonomous vehicles — the most mature manifestation of AI in the real world — are now serving well over 50K public rides every week, without a human driver, across some of the most complex urban environments in the U.S., including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Dmitri will reflect on some of the challenges and lessons learned along the way, unveiling how what once seemed impossible is now a reality.

Bio: Dmitri Dolgov (PhD CSE 2006) is the co-CEO of Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to to be the world’s most trusted driver.

Dmitri is one of the founders of the Google self-driving car project, which began in 2009 and became Waymo in 2016. As co-CEO, Dmitri is responsible for overall company strategy, with his primary focus on the development and deployment of the Waymo Driver, based on a custom, in-house designed, fully autonomous technology stack.

Dmitri previously served as Waymo’s CTO. Prior to Waymo, Dmitri worked on autonomous driving efforts at Toyota and at Stanford as part of Stanford’s DARPA Urban Challenge team.

Dmitri received his B.S. and M.S. in Physics and Math from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.