Paul Eremenko

Paul Eremenko (born 1979, born Pavlo Oleksandrovych Eremenko) is a Ukrainian American innovator and technology executive. He was formerly the chief technology officer and senior vice president of United Technologies Corporation. Earlier, he served as the CTO of Airbus, and former CEO of Airbus Silicon Valley innovation center. He is a former Google executive and head of Google's Project Ara, an effort to create an open, modular smartphone platform. Eremenko was named one of the Top-10 Tech Leaders of 2015 in FORTUNE Magazine. Eremenko has also come out as a strong proponent of artificial intelligence and autonomy research. Eremenko has cited his desire to build a starship as the motivation underpinning his career.

Early life Eremenko was born in Lviv, Ukraine. His father is the Ukrainian mathematician Alexandre Eremenko. When he was 13, he and his parents emigrated to the United States.

Education

Eremenko earned a bachelor's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, a Master's in Aeronautics from Caltech, and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University Law Center. He trained as a pilot at Aretz Airport near Purdue University.

United Technologies Corporation On 30 November 2017, Eremenko was named Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, effective 1 January 2018. Eremenko will provide strategic leadership for the company's research, engineering and development activities in the global aerospace and building systems industries. He will also oversee the United Technologies Research Center.

Airbus Group

On 29 May 2015, Eremenko was named the founding CEO of Airbus Group Silicon Valley technology and business innovation center. In this capacity, he was responsible for establishing Airbus's Silicon Valley presence.

Google

At Google, Eremenko created and headed Project Ara, which seeks to democratize the mobile phone hardware ecosystem and to make the mobile internet accessible to the next five billion people. The ATAP division at Google aims to replicate the innovation model of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the private sector. While at DARPA, Eremenko developed and managed several projects, including an effort to revolutionize design and manufacture of complex military systems (such as vehicles and aircraft) called Adaptive Vehicle Make, the System F6 fractionated spacecraft program, and the 100 Year Starship. Eremenko was also responsible for a crowd-sourced military vehicle effort called XC2V which was said to revolutionize auto manufacturing.

Booz Allen Hamilton

Eremenko started his career as an associate in the defense business segment of Booz Allen Hamilton, consulting in particular for DARPA, which he later joined.

Controversies Since Eremenko was responsible for DARPA's drone and robotics programs, he was asked in the 2013 Nova documentary Rise of the Drones whether he was concerned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, he replied "if you were to ask ... whether the Rise of the Machines-type scenario is a real concern ... my response would be, 'We should be so lucky.' In fact, if we could get little slivers of that kind of adaptive and cognitive capability into systems, that would be a very significant breakthrough, from where we stand today."

Other work

Eremenko was one of the creators and early proponents of a systems engineering strategy for creating more flexible and adaptable products known as value-driven design.