VP
Amazon

Babak Parviz is a Vice President at Amazon.com. He received his BA in Literature from University of Washington, BS in Electronics from Sharif University of Technology, MS in Physics from University of Michigan, MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Univ. of Michigan; and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Prior to joining Amazon he was with Google as a Google Distinguished Engineer and a Director at Google [x]. He is the creator of Google Glass. He founded, built, and led the Glass program till 2013, founded the robotics surgery program (now an independent company, Verb Surgical), and co-founded the Smart Contact Lens program at Google (now a joint collaboration with Novartis). He co-invented the biosensing technology resulting in the founding of Claros Diagnostics Inc. (acquired by OPKO). His research, engineering, and development interests span novel computing and communication paradigms, high-tech with social impact, bionanotechnology, bioengineering, MEMS, nano-scale devices, and photonics. His work has been put on display at the London Museum of Science and has received numerous recognitions and awards including National Science Foundation Career Award, MIT Technology Review 35, Time magazine’s best invention of the year (2008 and 2012), IEEE CAS Industrial Pioneer Award, Your Health Top 10 Medical advance of the year, and About.com top invention and has been reported on in thousands of articles worldwide. He was selected by Ad Age as one of the 50 most creative people in the United States. Last year he received the University of Michigan Bicentennial Alumni Award.