Sarah Tang

Sarah Tang is a highly accomplished roboticist and software engineer currently working as a Tech Lead and Senior Staff Software Engineer on the Planner ML team at Waymo. Here are some key details about her background and career:

Education and Early Career

Sarah Tang received her undergraduate degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2013. She then went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning both a Master's and PhD in Robotics and Mechanical Engineering between 2013-2018.12

During her time at UPenn, Sarah conducted research on unmanned aerial robots, focusing on areas like:

• Search-based planning
• Optimization-based planning
• Multi-robot coordination
• Quadrotor dynamics and control

Her PhD dissertation was titled "Control, planning, and coordination for dynamic aerial manipulation with robot teams".2

Industry Experience

After completing her PhD, Sarah's career has progressed rapidly in the autonomous vehicle industry:

Nuro (2018-2021):

• Started as a Software Engineer in Planning
• Quickly promoted to Tech Lead and then Tech Lead Manager of the Motion Planning team
• Achieved Staff Engineer level in just 2 years
• Led development of decision-making and trajectory optimization for Nuro's autonomous delivery vehicles
• Helped achieve major milestones like autonomous operation without drivers/chase cars

Waymo (2021-Present):

• Joined as a Staff Software Engineer in Planning
• Currently a Tech Lead / Senior Staff Engineer on the Planner ML team
• Working on making driving "safer, smoother, and smarter with big ML models"2

Achievements and Recognition

• Named to Business Insider's 2021 list of "Rising stars in autonomous vehicles"4
• Received awards during her PhD including the John A. Goff Award and Outstanding Teaching Assistant award4
• Has published numerous research papers on robotics and autonomous systems1

Sarah is passionate about building intelligent robots that can make complex decisions in dynamic environments. At Waymo, she is leveraging machine learning to improve autonomous driving capabilities and safety.35