Austin Russell

Austin is an accomplished applied physicist, and founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies, Inc. He founded the company in 2012 with a vision to develop a new type of LiDAR for the autonomous vehicle industry. Prior to Luminar, he was working on several projects in the photonics industry — of which some involved Austin building custom 3D mapping sensors. Austin started independent research at the Beckman Laser Institute at age 16, after which he briefly attended Stanford in the applied physics department. Austin subsequently accepted the Thiel Fellowship to focus full time on Luminar and accelerate the business.