Event Location: GHC 6115
Bio: Dr. Parag Batavia is the founder of Neya Systems, LLC, in Wexford PA. He is a 1999 graduate of the CMU Robotics Institute Ph.D. program, and a 2009 graduate of Drexel’s MBA program. At Neya, he is responsible for all areas of company growth, and has taken the company from 1 employee in 2010 to 24 employees today, and has landed on the INC 5000 list of fastest growing companies in 2014 and 2015, while not taking any external venture or equity funding. He is also a 2015 recipient of the Western PA Regional Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Prior to starting Neya, Parag worked in a number of small and large robotics organizations in Pittsburgh.

Abstract: Neya Systems is a 5-year old unmanned systems company in Wexford, PA, which was recently named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the world’s top-10 most innovative companies in Robotics. At Neya, we focus on a variety of applied robotics research efforts, including navigation in rugged unstructured outdoor terrain, mission management for land/air/sea platforms, underwater signal analysis, task and mission decomposition, and computer vision applications in industry (construction, automotive, rail). In the first third of this talk, I will go over how I got from being an RI Ph.D. grad (1999) to running and growing Neya – lots of lessons learned, and pointers for students who may be thinking of joining a small company or starting their own. In the rest of the presentation, I will present some of the work we have been doing for the past 5 years, where we are headed, and where we see growth in both DoD and commercial robotics.