Rowan is a research scientist working on machine learning methods for autonomous vehicle (AV) planning at Waymo. Previously, Rowan obtained his PhD in machine learning at the University of Cambridge; worked on AVs at Uber, Toyota, and UC Berkeley; and enjoys organizing academic workshops on AVs.

The Pop in Your Job – What drives you? Why do you love your job?
Working on autonomous vehicles is the best job in the world: a visible deployment of robots in the real world, embodied AIs that anyone can use and interact with, to improve road safety for everyone, while continually posing new and technically interesting problems to solve.

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to be the most trusted driver. Since our start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, we’ve been working towards improving the world's access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes.