Senior Autopilot Engineer, Tesla California, USA

Of course, a nomination from the innovation incubator Tesla would pique interest. A recent boom in R&D has connected the worlds of high-precision GNSS and multi-sensor autonomous and augmented navigation systems. Pengfei (Phil) Duan is a talented young engineer with deep roots in GNSS engineering and research who is now a senior localization and estimation engineer with the autopilot team at Tesla.

Phil’s credentials are impressive, beginning with his undergraduate degree in optic information science from Wuham University of Technology in China, a regional powerhouse high-tech research school. Then his masters—his thesis in the ADS-B navigation signal message design—and doctorate in electrical engineering from Ohio University. He worked on indoor navigation as a visiting scholar at Eurecat, the Technology Centre of Catalonia, and had stints in GNSS engineering for Trimble and Samsung. He is known for his very eager, yet focused, approach to his work.

This profile is one of 40 in xyHt’s 2018 Outlook issue.  Click on the image below to read more.