Pioneer in Aerospace Engineering and Autonomous Systems Education
Jacopo Tani is an accomplished aerospace engineer and entrepreneur who served as a Senior Researcher at ETH Zürich from September 2017 to September 2023 in the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he focused on dynamic systems and control, and earned recognition as an Outstanding Teaching Assistant. His earlier education includes a Master's in Space Engineering (110 cum laude) and a Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering from Sapienza University of Rome. Before ETH Zürich, he worked as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital, contributing to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes project with Harvard Medical and NASA. He co-founded Duckietown, Inc., where he currently serves as President and CEO, after initially being Chief Strategy Officer. At ETH Zürich, he co-taught the innovative "Self-Driving Cars with Duckietown" course, a comprehensive program that introduces students to vehicle autonomy through hands-on experience with scale-model self-driving cars. His early career included multiple internships at Thales Alenia Space and a notable position as Italy's delegate to the United Nations Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space