Stephen L. Smith is a Canada Research Chair in Autonomous Systems and a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo where he directs the Autonomous Systems Lab. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. He completed his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), his Master’s at the University of Toronto, and his B.Sc. at Queen’s University, Kingston. He is a licensed Professional Engineer (PEng) with the Professional Engineers Ontario, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. His research focuses on control, optimization and artificial intelligence for autonomous systems and robotics.