Udacity Talks is extremely pleased to announce that on Wednesday, June 7th, at 4pm PT, our guest will be Yoky Matsuoka, Chief Technology Officer at Nest. Yoky Matsuoka is a pioneer in the field of Neurobotics, and has previously worked at Apple and Google, and held the position of CEO of Quanttus. She has been a professor at Carnegie Mellon, as well as the University of Washington, where she ran the Neurobotics Lab.
RSVP for Udacity Talks with Yoky Matsuoka!
A MacArthur Fellow
Significant recognition of Yoky’s work came in 2007, when she became a MacArthur Fellow. Receiving a MacArthur Fellowship—often referred to as a “genius” grant—is an extremely prestigious honor. The list of past recipients reads like a Who’s-Who of the world’s great minds, with examples including everyone from poet Anne Carson and mathematician Andrew Wiles, to Computer Science Professor Maneesh Agrawala and astrophysicist Sara Seager.
When Yoky Matsuoka was awarded her MacArthur Fellowship in 2007, her work was described by the organization as “transforming our understanding of how the central nervous system coordinates musculoskeletal action and of how robotic technology can enhance the mobility of people with manipulation disabilities.” She has more recently been described as “Silicon Valley’s most in-demand robotics professor,” and her assumption of the Chief Technology Officer role at Nest has been one of the biggest hiring announcements of the year.
A Google X Co-Founder
With Sebastian Thrun performing the role of host, this episode of Udacity Talks is sure to be a compelling one. Not only are Yoky and Sebastian two of the most influential thinkers and leaders in Silicon Valley, but they actually go back quite a ways together. Sebastian Thrun, Astro Teller, and Yoky Matsuoka co-founded Google X, and if you watched the recent Udacity Talks episode with Astro Teller as guest, you know just how deep the connections run between these first-generation “moonshot” makers!
An Intersect 2017 Speaker
Yoky Matsuoka was one of our featured speakers at Intersect 2017, and her keynote speech on Robotics was one of the highlights of the whole event. If you were in the audience or streamed the event live, then you know firsthand what an engaging and insightful communicator she is. If you missed her talk, you can watch it here:
Our Guest for Udacity Talks!
The new episode of Udacity Talks—hosted by Sebastian Thrun, and featuring Yoky Matsuoka as our special guest—will air on Wednesday, June 7, at 4pm PDT. You can RSVP for the episode here. This will be a truly unique opportunity to experience two pioneering innovators digging deep into all things robotics, in an unscripted dialogue powered by questions submitted directly by our Udacity students. Don’t miss this episode! RSVP today, and get ready to enjoy another excellent episode of Udacity Talks.
