Toyota Research Institute Girl Geek Dinner 2019

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🧠  Check out TRI talks & speaker details below:

“TRI’s Mission: Improving the Quality of Life” by Kelly Kay, EVP & CFO

Kelly will kick off the evening with an overview of TRI’s mission and vision as well as our approach to building a challenging, diverse, inspiring and fun workplace across our three sites. By combining deep foundational research with accelerated, market-focused development cycles, TRI presents a unique environment to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges. If you’re inspired by the idea of building an uncrashable car and developing tools to help the elderly age in their homes, join us.

“Building the Uncrashable Car” by Carrie Bobier-Tiu, Manager, Control, Planning and Control Driving Team

Since its inception, TRI has been committed to a two-track development approach to automated driving: Chauffeur, which focuses on full autonomy, where the human is essentially removed from the driving equation; and Guardian, which uses the sensor suite and intelligence of autonomous driving to amplify human control of the vehicle. Carrie will talk about her work in autonomous driving and what’s next for TRI.

“Accelerating Materials Discovery by Helping You Fail Faster” by Ha-Kyung Kwon, Research Scientist

As part of TRI’s Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery team, Ha-Kyung  is building machine learning tools capable of rapidly advancing the discovery of new materials for batteries, fuel cells and other critical components for use in future zero-emissions vehicles. She’ll share her insights about what makes TRI a unique place to work and her rare opportunity to couple disciplined and intensive research with cutting edge machine learning techniques which will enable humans to fail faster and, thereby, accelerate discovery.

“I am the IT Guy” by Jen Cohen, VP of Operations

For the first decade of her career, Jen  offered the familiar phrase over and over again: “I am the IT guy.” Today, she leads the IT, Facilities, Internal Communications, Project Management and Operations functions at TRI. She’ll share the challenges of instituting best practices and operational rigor in a highly innovative and constantly changing environment. Jen will also discuss her best hacks for developing a high-performance culture in technology organizations.

“Navigating the Intersection of Law and Technology at TRI” by Fatima Alloo, Legal Counsel

Operating successfully as a lawyer at TRI requires a firm grasp of relevant legal principles, a deep and wide understanding of TRI’s technology and business challenges and a willingness to enter unchartered waters. TRI’s Legal Counsel, Fatima, will offer a quick overview of the thought provoking and challenging issues presented by autonomous driving and robotics. She’ll also share her strategies for navigating the intersection of law and technology at TRI.

“Designing Robots to Serve an Aging Population” by Steffi Paepcke, Senior UX Designer, Robotics

TRI’s mission is to develop robots that help older adults age in place with a high quality of life. As a UX Designer, Steffi will share her insights about designing robots for this unique population and the research she leads to identify their needs and translate them into solutions and engineering requirements. Steffi will also discuss her work on projects like the telepresence robot, which expands mobility by enabling people to be virtually present at events like the Olympics. With robots playing an increasingly important role in all our lives, Steffi will share her insights about the critical role diversity plays in user design.

“2020 Olympics Showcases Mobility and Inclusion” by Suzanne Basalla, Chief of Staff

As TRI’s Olympics Champion, Suzanne will offer insights about Toyota’s unique sponsorship of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, including its role as the first ever mobility partner. TRI will play a key role in demonstrating how enhanced mobility can provide the freedom to move, showcasing self-driving cars, tele-presence robots and other innovations that help everyone, everywhere participate more fully in life. She’ll also highlight the employee resources groups and family-friendly benefits that help make TRI a great place to work.

We are excited to host a Girl Geek Dinner at Toyota Research Institute (TRI) in Los Altos on Thursday, November 14 for an evening of delicious food, drinks and networking — explore tables dedicated to TRI’s primary focus areas: Automated Driving where TRI is working to build an uncrashable car; Robotics where TRI is striving to amplify people’s capabilities as they age; and Advanced Materials where TRI leverages artificial intelligence to enable discovery of new materials for batteries and fuel cells. Get a sneak peek at our autonomous cars and robots!

Following an introduction about TRI’s mission from Kelly Kay, EVP and CFO, we’ll have a lightning round of six thought-provoking presentations by women from our automated driving, robotics, materials, legal and operations teams. They’ll share their insights on what attracted them to TRI and the complex and challenging work they do here.

TRI combines cutting edge, advanced research with accelerated, industry-leading development in service of a unique mission – to develop automated driving, robotics and other human amplification technology that improve the quality of life. At TRI, world class researchers, engineers, developers, designers and innovators are showing what is possible when the limits to mobility are changed.