Kenneth Goldberg

Ken Goldberg is a distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, holding the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering. He serves as Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department, Director of the AUTOLAB and CITRIS 'People and Robots' Initiative, and is a Founding Member of the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab. His academic appointments span multiple disciplines, including EECS in the College of Engineering, Art Practice, School of Information at UC Berkeley, and Radiation Oncology at UC San Francisco. As Chief Scientist for Ambi Robotics and Jacobi Robotics, he bridges academic research with industry applications.

Goldberg's research spans robotics, artificial intelligence, and automation with significant contributions to robot grasping, cloud robotics, and medical robotics. His work integrates theoretical foundations with practical applications across manufacturing, healthcare, and artistic domains. He has pioneered concepts like Fog Robotics, which distributes computation between cloud and edge devices, and developed the Dexterity Network (Dex-Net) for robust grasping. His research consistently explores the intersection of technology and human experience, including collaborative human-robot systems and the societal implications of automation.

His recent publications reveal a strong focus on robust robot learning, particularly addressing the 'reality gap' between simulation and real-world performance. Goldberg emphasizes hybrid approaches combining data-driven methods with traditional engineering principles, as seen in his work on 'Large Robot Action Models.' His research increasingly addresses medical applications, including surgical robotics and precision healthcare delivery, while maintaining strong connections to fundamental robotics challenges like part orientation and grasping.

Goldberg has founded and leads several significant research initiatives including the AUTOLAB, the Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics (Cal-MR), and the Robot Learning Foundation which organizes the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL). He previously served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering and currently sits on the editorial board of Science Robotics.

His teaching portfolio includes courses on database systems, robotics, and the intersection of art and technology. As Founding Director of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, he has fostered interdisciplinary dialogue across campus. His research has been supported by major funding from NSF, NIH, and industry partners, with practical applications emerging in manufacturing, healthcare, and agricultural domains.