Innovation speaker Yoky Matsuoka is a Vice President at Google. She was formerly the Chief Technology Officer at Nest until Nest was taken over by Google. Matsuoka is also on the Board of Directors at HP.

Matsuoka is an expert in artificial intelligence (AI) software engineering robotics user experience (UX) and machine learning. Prior to becoming the Chief Technology Officer at Nest Matsuoka was the Vice President of Technology at Nest where she was in charge of user experience (UX) and the learning aspects of Nest’s thermostat.

Previously she was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington director of that university’s Neurobotics Laboratory and director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.

She is a 2007 MacArthur Fellow commonly referred to as Genius Grant. At the University of Washington her research combined neuroscience and robotics – sometimes referred to by Matsuoka by the portmanteau neurobotics – to create more realistic prosthetics.

As a speaker, Yoky Matsuoka talks at conferences all around the world on robotics and the intersection between humans and machines.