MMAE Seminar: Selina Pan—Experiences with Autonomous Vehicles in Industry

Armour College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering will welcome Selina Pan, senior research scientist at Toyota Research Institute, on Wednesday, November 18th, to present a virtual lecture from 3:30–4:30 p.m. 

Contact Elena Magnus at magnus@iit.edu for the seminar details and link to join

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles are a major part of Silicon Valley now. Countless companies are working on the technology, all with different approaches. This talk will present an overview of Toyota Research Institute's strategy: a two-pronged approach through its Chauffeur and Guardian systems. This talk will also present one engineer's career path and background skills on the way toward working in the field of self-driving cars in industry in 2020, and a perspective on how to get started in this field.

Biography

Selina Pan is a senior research scientist at Toyota Research Institute, where she works on control, integration, and human-vehicle interaction on the Chauffeur autonomous system and Guardian shared autonomy system. Prior to joining Toyota, she was a controls research scientist at Ford Research and Innovation Center. She was a postdoctoral scholar in the Dynamic Design Laboratory at Stanford University, where her research focused on ethics, driver adaptation, and integrated path planning and path tracking in autonomous vehicles. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in mechanical engineering, researching automotive engine control and unmanned aircraft. While at Berkeley, she also taught as an adjunct lecturer at California Maritime Academy. She received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan. She was a founding member and served as chair of the Women and Allies Employee Resource Group at Toyota Research Institute from 2018–2020. She currently serves as the industry liaison of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division’s Automotive Transportation Systems Technical Committee.