Dr. Tessa Lau is CTO and Chief Robot Whisperer at Savioke, where she’s creating a new generation of autonomous robots. Previously, Dr. Lau was a Research Scientist at Willow Garage, where she led an effort to develop simple interfaces for personal robots based on end user programming. She also spent 11 years at IBM Research developing end user programming systems for enterprises. More generally, Dr. Lau’s research is in the area of intelligent user interfaces: combining techniques from artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction to create systems that enhance human productivity and creativity.  She has served on organizing and program committees for major AI and HCI conferences and journals. She also served on the board of CRA-W, the CRA committee on the status of women in computing research. Dr. Lau was named to Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business 2015 list and featured as a Rising Star by OZY magazine. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington.