A recognized expert in the development and application of tools for controlling complex dynamical systems, Raff is responsible for overall system architecture and control algorithms development. He received a Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering in 2002 for his "Theoretical and Experimental Advances in the Robust Control of Feedback Systems". Raff served as the system architect and faculty advisor for the four time world champion Cornell University RoboCup autonomous robot soccer team. He is the recipient of two best paper awards from the American Automatic Control Council and the IEEE, has won a National Science Foundation Career Award, and has received several departmental and college-wide teaching awards at Cornell. His dynamic and interactive art has been on exhibit at several international venues, including the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, and the National Gallery of Canada. Raff holds an Engineering Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in the division of engineering and applied science. He is a professor of engineering at ETH Zurich.

Widely respected for his research and practical application of Internet and e-commerce technologies, Pete oversees the architecture of Kiva's host control material handling software platform and the creation of resource algorithms that drive various modules of our systems.  Prior to joining Kiva, Pete was an associate professor of computer science at North Carolina State, where he served as co-director of the university's e-commerce program and a member of the faculty of its operations research program.  An early researcher in Internet auction technology, Pete led the development of the Michigan Internet AuctionBot in 1995 and earned a prestigious National Science Foundation Career Award to study flexible trading agents. He has spent the past decade researching multi-agent resource planning, game theory, and computational mechanism design.  Pete holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master of Science degree and a Doctorate in computer science from the University of Michigan.

Noted for his work in the development of complex engineered systems, Pete contributes his technical and program experience to hardware engineering and the development of Kiva's products. Pete comes to Kiva from Mansfield Technical Consulting, a technical engineering and consulting firm he founded and ran in Bellevue, Washington for more than six years. A range of projects included development of custom automated manufacturing test and inspection systems and a complex gear-box design for the aerospace industry. Prior to launching Mansfield Technical Consulting, Pete spent seven years with Intelligent Automation Systems, Inc., where he served in a range of research and program management roles and focused on developing custom automation equipment for manufacturing and laboratory deployment, including a complex 3D vision system, NASA robotic manipulator, and golf ball tracking technology. Pete holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia and a Doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A veteran Software Engineer with more than a decade of experience, Michael manages the engineering and development of the production software applications that drive Kiva's systems. Prior to joining Kiva, Michael spent nine years at Motorola in various software development roles. As a member of the company's semiconductor sector technology group, he helped develop and deploy tools to support the use of emerging complex microcontrollers and processors. As part of Motorola's global software group, Michael helped establish a software center at corporate headquarters to serve the communications, industrial, and automotive sectors. His work in process optimization helped him to earn a Six Sigma Green Belt. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and mathematics from Cornell and a Doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois.

Joe is responsible for leading Kiva’s software development efforts. Joe’s experience ranges from managing focused start up engineering teams to complex multi-national business teams. He excels at building products and organizations. Prior to joining Kiva, Joe was an entrepreneur in residence for Prism Ventures after a successful career at Alcatel-Lucent where he served as VP of the Gateway Business Unit. In this capacity, Joe had P&L responsibility for a 700 person global team. Earlier in his career at Lucent he was the VP of Research & Development for Next Generation Networking solutions. Joe has also held executive engineering positions with Telica, Fujitsu and 3Com. Joe holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts and both a Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in computer science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Matt Verminski - VP of Hardware Engineering

 

A leader in the simulation community with 19 years of experience in services delivery and software product development, Dan manages the systems engineering function that turns unique customer inventory management requirements into working Kiva system designs. Dan helps Kiva use simulation to verify and tune each design and to demonstrate system operation to customers and prospective customers. Prior to Kiva, he founded Systemflow Simulations, Inc., a provider of engineering services to material handling, manufacturing, and mining clients and a developer of system visualization software products. Previously Dan worked for Wolverine Software Corporation, Electronic Data Systems, and TRW. Dan holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan.