Davide Scaramuzza

Davide Scaramuzza is a Professor of Robotics and Perception at the University of Zurich, where he does research at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning. He did his PhD at ETH Zurich, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, and was visiting professor at Stanford University. His research focuses on autonomous, agile navigation of micro drones using both standard and neuromorphic event-based cameras. He pioneered autonomous, vision-based navigation of drones, which inspired the navigation algorithm of the NASA Mars helicopter. He has been serving as a consultant for the United Nations on topics such as disaster response and disarmament, as well as the Fukushima Action Plan on Nuclear Safety. He won many prestigious awards, such as a European-Research-Council Consolidator grant, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, an SNF-ERC Starting Grant, a Google Research Award, a Facebook Distinguished Faculty Research Award, two NASA TechBrief Awards, and many paper awards (TRO, RSS, IROS, CORL, CVPR, etc.). In 2015, he co-founded Zurich-Eye, today Facebook Zurich, which developed the world-leading virtual-reality headset, Oculus Quest, which sold over 10 million units. In 2020, he co-founded SUIND, which builds autonomous drones for precision agriculture. Many aspects of his research have been prominently featured in broader media, such as The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, BBC News, and Discovery Channel.