Virginia Tech to host Amazon Vice President Babak Parviz
Virginia Tech President Tim Sands is hosting a conversation with Amazon Vice President Babak Parviz on Monday, Sept. 12, at 5 p.m. at the Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested, but walk-ups are welcome.
The creator of Google Glass, Parviz will present his talk, "Building from the Ground up at Amazon," and share insights from his career experiences and how Amazon built two products - Amazon Explore and Amazon Glow.
Following his presentation, he will be joined by Sands for an interactive dialogue about potential future innovations and how his career path landed him at Amazon.
Parviz founded a group at Amazon working on a series of bold projects that seek to improve lives. In his role, Parviz has helped lead Amazon into health care, experiential e-commerce, machine learning for biotech, smart eyewear, and devices for childhood development.
Prior to joining Amazon in 2014, Parviz was with Google as a Distinguished Engineer and director at Google [x] where he founded the team and built the famed Google Glass. He then founded the robotic surgery program, which later became an independent company Verb Surgical, and the active contact lens program, which is a joint collaboration with Novartis. Since 2003, he has been an affiliate professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Washington.
Parviz’s work has been on display at the London Museum of Science. He 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 Circuits and Systems Industrial Pioneer award, Your Health Top 10 Medical Advance of the Year, and About.com Top Invention. He was selected by Ad Age as one of the 50 most creative people in the United States. In 2017, he received the University of Michigan Bicentennial Alumni Award.
Parviz received his Bachelor of Arts in literature from the University of Washington, a Bachelor of Science in electronics from Sharif University of Technology, a Master of Science in physics, and Master of Science and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. He also completed his postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University.
