Raffaello D’Andrea
Founder and Chief Executive Officer | Professor, Verity | ETH Zurich

Raffaello D’Andrea is founder, CEO, and chairman of the board of Verity, the world’s leading autonomous indoor drone system provider; cofounder of ROBO Global, creator of the world’s first robotics exchange traded fund; and a professor of dynamic systems and control at ETH Zurich (on leave). He cofounded Kiva Systems—now Amazon Robotics—in 2003. He was the system architect and faculty advisor of the four-time world champion Cornell RoboCup team from 1999 to 2003. In addition, he’s a new media artist with exhibitions at various international venues, including the Venice Biennale, the FRAC Centre, and the National Gallery of Canada. Other creations and projects include the Flying Machine Arena, the Distributed Flight Array, the Balancing Cube, Cubli, Flight Assembled Architecture, the Blind Juggler, the Robotic Chair, and RoboEarth. His two TED talks, with almost 20 million views, have inspired a generation to pursue engineering, robotics, and computer science.