Dr. Gillula began his career in academia doing research in the fields of robotics and machine learning. As a participant in the DARPA Desert Grand Challenge, he did work on computer vision systems and sensor fusion systems for unmanned autonomous ground vehicles. During his doctorate, his research focused on how to design guaranteed safe control algorithms for hybrid systems, with a focus on unmanned aerial vehicles. His thesis focused on the design of guaranteed-safe machine learning systems, fusing control theoretic and machine learning techniques.
Since finishing his Ph.D., Dr. Gillula has turned his attention to the intersection of technology and civil liberties issues, including mobile devices, big data, net neutrality, and algorithmic fairness and transparency. He provides technical expertise to lawyers and activists who work on digital civil liberties, and has given a multitude of talks to conferences, invited groups, and policymakers.
A strong believer in never taking the straightforward path to anything, Dr. Gillula went to Caltech for undergrad, then got his PhD in computer science from Stanford University by working on robotics projects with a professor in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
