Francis Govers

Autonomy Lead, Advanced Vertical Lift Systems, Bell Flight

Francis is the designer of more than 30 unmanned land, sea, air, and space vehicles. He currently works at Bell Flight as autonomy lead for Advanced Vertical Lift Systems. He is an Air Force veteran, was head of command and control for the International Space Station, deputy chief engineer for Unmanned Systems at the U.S. Army Future Combat Systems, participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge, and managed a Zeppelin airship. He designed RAMSEE, the robot security guard, as chief robotics officer of Gamma 2 Robotics. As VP of Engineering at Sportvision, he was responsible for the “yellow line” for NFL football and designed the TV telemetry system for NASCAR and IndyCar. He has published 45 magazine articles and authored the book Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, available from Packt Publishing.

He is highly active in STEM education outreach programs such as the Bell Vertical Robotics Competition. He received five outstanding achievement awards from NASA, the Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society, and recognition from Scientific American for “World Changing Ideas.”

Matt Jones

Chief Systems Architect, Wind River Systems
Product Marketing Lead, GENIVI Alliance

Matt Jones is the chief systems architect at Wind River^® in a role spanning safety-critical real-time, Linux, and cloud products. Matt recently departed Virgin Hyperloop One, where as senior vice president he led the Software Engineering teams and was tasked with providing all the software needed to manage, control, and operate an autonomous hyperloop system. This included embedded software and electronics, networking, cloud data and services, and customer-facing applications.

Previously he was the chief product officer with moovel Group, Daimler’s mobility subsidiary. He was focused on integrating personal, shared, and public transportation options into single-view mobility products. In this role he prepared the way for connected, autonomous, shared electric vehicles launching in many cities across the U.S. and E.U.

Prior to that he spent almost 14 years at Jaguar Land Rover as the director of Future Technology, leading development of electronic and software systems for future connected autonomous vehicles. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Linux Foundation.

Paul Hart

Chief Technology Officer, Curtiss-Wright
Paul Hart joined Curtiss-Wright/Penny & Giles in 1982 as a student electronics design engineer and has held several Engineering and Business Development positions in the fields of flight recorder design, flight data replay and analysis, avionics certification, and aircraft performance software since graduating in 1987. In 2000, he moved to Thales Avionics in London for three years, working as product manager for Military Helicopter Flight and Mission Management Systems. After Thales, he moved to Smiths Aerospace (now GE Aviation) as project manager for engine sensors on the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. He subsequently headed Mission Systems for Cobham Aviation Services/FR Aviation for seven years, being the single point of accountability for development and operational readiness of the Electronic Warfare and Towed Target suite on a fleet of 15 Falcon 20 aircraft delivering more than 3,300 sorties per year, including 20+ overseas RAF, RN, and NATO detachments. In 2011 he rejoined Curtiss-Wright as director of Avionics Engineering and was promoted in 2013 to Chief Technology Officer for the Avionics & Electronics group, appointed as a Curtiss-Wright Technical Fellow in 2015.

Gareth Noyes

Chief Strategy Officer
Gareth Noyes is responsible for overseeing Wind River^® corporate strategy and leading the Chief Technology Office. Charged with developing the company’s long-term technology vision, he has Wind River positioned to address the evolving market landscape and disruptive forces such as the Internet of Things, the virtualization of the network, and the transition to a software-defined world. He joined the company in January 1999 and has held roles in various areas, including engineering, product management, business development, and strategic alliances. He also led the acquisition of Wind River by Intel in 2009, as well as the acquisition of Wind River by TPG from Intel in 2018.

Prior to joining Wind River, he was a research scientist working at various European laboratories and universities, where he developed expertise in complex embedded control and data acquisition systems. He holds a Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics from the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and a B.Sc. in physics from Royal Holloway at the University of London.