We discussed a number of things including: 

1. State of the robotics industry, regionally, nationally and globally 

2. Outlook for sector and funding forecast 

3. What's next in robotics at Ghost and Stevens 

4. Talent pipeline opportunities and challenges 

Jiren Parikh is the CEO of Ghost Robotics. He joined Messrs. Avik De and Gavin Kenneally in late 2015 to found Ghost Robotics to build agile, hardened and programmable legged robotic platforms for military and industrial applications. 

He has over 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, C-level and Sr. Executive founding, scaling and turning around technology businesses covering robotics, software, telecom, content and platform technologies. 

Past awards include AUVSI Defense Innovation Award, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, NJTC Growth Company of the Year and SmartCEO Philadelphia Turnaround of the Year. --

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Dr. Brendan Englot is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology where he has been a member of the faculty since 2014. Brendan is the founder and director of the Robust Field Autonomy Lab, which develops robust autonomous navigation solutions for mobile robots operating in harsh and unstructured environments. 

He received S.B., S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, 2009 and 2012, respectively. At MIT, he studied motion planning for surveillance and inspection applications, deploying his algorithms on an underwater robot to inspect Navy and Coast Guard ships. 

During 2012-2014, Brendan was with United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut, USA, where he was a Research Scientist and Principal Investigator in the Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and a technical contributor to the Sikorsky Autonomous Research Aircraft. 

Brendan received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2017, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2020.