David Pietrocola is a robotics engineer and founder of Robots In DC, a blog covering robotics news, public policy and tutorials from the nation's capital. He is also the CEO of Lifebotics LLC, which is developing robotic solutions for independent living. His research interests include personal and service robots, intelligent systems, and human-robot interaction. From April 2011 to September 2012, he served at the National Science Foundation as an analyst for interdisciplinary research and graduate education. He earned a M.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with Honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. David has published and presented peer-reviewed research in a variety of areas, including autonomous mobile robots, agent-based modeling, virtual agents, human behavior modeling, serious games, digital copyright laws, and graduate education. He has helped develop several award-winning autonomous robots for outdoor navigation in uncertain environments, and has been a judge, volunteer, and rules writer for the Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robot Contest since 2006. He is a member of IEEE, the IEEE-USA Intellectual Property Committee, and the IEEE-USA Research and Development Committee.

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