John Leonard, Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

John J. Leonard is Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.  He is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).  His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots.  He holds the degrees of B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1987) and D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford (1994). He is an IEEE Fellow (2014).  Professor Leonard is currently on sabbatical leave from MIT serving as Vice President for Autonomous Driving Research at Toyota Research Institute, where he is working on the use of autonomous driving technology to improve vehicle safety.