Carol E. Reiley

Carol Elizabeth Reiley was born in Flint, Michigan in 1982 and at a young age her family moved to Vancouver, Washington.[2][3] Her father is an engineer and her mother a flight attendant; Reiley credits both for her interest in technology and global humanitarian work. She has one younger brother, who is also an engineer.[4][5] Reiley is of Chinese descent and grew up in a Mandarin-speaking household.

Her first invention was a humane mousetrap she fashioned at age 8 to catch her runaway pet hamster.[5] Reiley started her first business at age 10, inspired by the Babysitters Club book series. Her first professional job was at age 15 as a television personality on Homework Helpline, a local cable show geared towards K-12 graders, answering math and English questions on the air.[3]

Reiley received her B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University in 2004 with a concentration in robotics research, and an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, specializing in haptics. She then enrolled in a Ph.D. program (ABD) specializing in computer vision / artificial intelligence, which she never completed.[6][7] She spent a year at Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab with her Ph.D. advisor, who was on sabbatical there.

She married Andrew Ng in 2014.[8] Their engagement announcement was featured in IEEE Spectrum.[9] Ng and Reiley have a daughter together, born in 2019.[7]

She has built products for surgical robotic systems at Intuitive Surgical, space robotic systems at Lockheed Martin, and self-driving cars at drive.ai.[3]

She was an instructor at Johns Hopkins University co-teaching intersession courses Haptics For Surgical Robotics (2006); and Developing Facebook Apps (2009).[10]

Reiley founded Squishybotz, and education company and is the author and publisher of Making a Splash, a children's book about growth mindset (2015).[11]

In 2015, she co-founded and was President of Drive.ai.[7] She was the initial investor and seed funded the company from her wedding fund.[12] In 2018, she started a new healthcare startup though she still serves on the board and is an advisor to drive.ai.[13] She also serves on Santa Clara University Engineering Advisory Board.[14]

In 2018, she announced that she was a spokesmodel for Guerlain and Harper's Bazaar China, to launch a new international beauty campaign.[15][16] She has been profiled in British Vogue, New York Times, and Wired for her work in AI.[17]

In 2018, she joined the San Francisco Symphony as one of the eight founding creative advisory board under its new musical director Esa-Pekka Salonen which include an Academy Award-nominated composer and McArthur Genius award winning musicians.[18][19]

Reiley has given two TEDx talks,[20][21] and has been a featured speaker at MIT Technology Review Conference,[22] The Atlantic,[23] World Government Summit,[24] Microsoft CEO summit, and USA Science and Engineering Festival.

She has been a guest contributor for IEEE Spectrum,[25] Techcrunch,[26] and MIT Tech Review.[27]

Reiley started her freshman year in college by doing underwater robotics research and getting a scuba license. Her research continued for several years, and her interest expanded to haptics and industrial robotic arms.[6] She was selected as a Computing Research Association Distributed Undergraduate Research Fellow.[28]

Reiley was named a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (2008–2010) to research strategies for improving human and robotic interaction for her PhD. She was elected to serve on the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society board (2008-2009) to put together key initiatives for thousands of graduate researchers.[29] She was the youngest member to serve on the board.

As of 2018, she has eight technical patents, and has authored more than a dozen papers published in various scientific conference proceedings, refereed journals and conferences.[30]

Reiley has been an active advocate for diversity in engineering and AI. While at Johns Hopkins University, she was on the founding board of the Graduate Women's Organization and the Whiting School of Engineering Diversity Board. At Santa Clara University, she cofounded chapters of Association for Computing Machinery and Society of Women Engineering.[31] She led the JHU Robotics Systems Challenge (2004-2011), SWE and ACM events, and Computer Mania Day workshops which served thousands of underserved minority students. She published a study in an education journal about diversity of middle and high school students in robot competitions.[32]

She joined All Raise, a nonprofit organization that’s behind diversity and inclusion efforts, as a mentor and a Founder for Change (2018).[33]

Reiley is a well-known DIY hacker. She has published several open source tutorials including the first hack to "Air Guitar Hero" - a fun rehabilitation exercise for people with amputations; and a DIY blood pressure monitor system for third world countries.[34][35] She has spoken at Maker Faire and USA Science and Engineering Festival several times,[36] and was the first female engineer featured on the cover of Make magazine.[37][38] Her 3D printed designs have been featured at the CES fashion show.

In 2011, Reiley founded and ran Tinkerbelle Labs, an open-source company focused on empowering hobbyists to build low-cost, do-it-yourself projects.

• Forbes' Top 50 women in tech (2018)[39]
• Quartz founder index (Ranked #18, 2018)[40]
• Inc. Magazine's Most Innovative Women Entrepreneurs (2017) [6]
• Silicon Valley's Most Influential Women in 2016.[3]
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (2008–2010)
• Society of Women Engineers top graduate award (2007)
• Computing Research Association Distributed Undergraduate Research Fellow (2003)