From Virginia Tech student to CEO of TORC with Michael Fleming: Saving lives through self-driving trucks

10/20/21 • 31 min

In this episode, Brett Malone, Ph.D., VTCRC President/CEO, talks with Michael about TORC, the region's strengths and how it has helped the company, his vision for autonomous trucking and more.
Michael Fleming official bio

Torc Robotics, a pioneer in self-driving vehicles {website}

Torc Robotics, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia, is an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, the global leader and pioneer in trucking. Founded in 2005 at the birth of the self-driving vehicle revolution, Torc has 16 years of experience in pioneering safety-critical, self-driving applications. Torc offers a complete self-driving vehicle software and integration solution and is currently focusing on commercializing self-driving trucks. “Trucking is the backbone of the U.S. economy, delivering food and products to every community in the country,” said Torc CEO Michael Fleming. “Daimler has led innovation in trucking for more than a century, from the first truck to driver assist technology. Torc is working with Daimler Truck to commercialize self-driving trucks to make our roads safer and better fulfilling our mission of saving lives.”
#self-driving #entrepreneur #virginiatech #hokies #vtcrc #torc

Torc Robotics, a pioneer in self-driving vehicles {website}

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undefined - “Always think about what the end game is like. How you can go from where you are now, to the very end.” with Webster Santos, Professor at Virginia Tech

“Always think about what the end game is like. How you can go from where you are now, to the very end.” with Webster Santos, Professor at Virginia Tech

Webster discusses his research with drug discovery and therapeutic areas, and is co-founder of Flux Therapeutics, Inc.

Webster Santos bio: https://chem.vt.edu/people/faculty/teaching-and-research/wsantos.html
Prof. Webster Santos received his BS and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia under Prof. Timothy Macdonald. Following his doctoral studies, he moved to Harvard University as a Ruth Kirschtein NIH fellow with Prof. Gregory Verdine. At Harvard, he performed chemical biology studies targeting RNA structures as well as HIV-1 integrase. In 2006, he started as an assistant professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech and was promoted to associate then full professor in 2018. He held a chaired position as the Blackwood Junior Faculty fellow of Life Science and is currently the Agnes and Cliff Lilly faculty fellow of drug discovery. He is a co-founder of three biotech companies and received the Schug Research Award as well as an Innovator’s award at Virginia Tech. He is on the editorial advisory board of current topics in medicinal chemistry, medicinal research reviews as well as boron in the Americas. His current research centers on developing drugs towards fatty liver disease, cancer, and multiple sclerosis, synthetic methodology of installing boron and silicon onto carbon bonds and chemical biology of targeting HIV-1 RNAs.

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undefined - An insight into artificial intelligence in therapeutic discovery: an interview with Daniel Smith, Co-Founder and Director of Software at Entos

An insight into artificial intelligence in therapeutic discovery: an interview with Daniel Smith, Co-Founder and Director of Software at Entos

Daniel Smith is the co-founder and director of software at Entos. Daniel holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in computational chemistry. With a passion for science, technology, and software engineering, Daniel has completed research for Georgia Institute of Technology and the Molecular Sciences Software Institute at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, before beginning his journey with Entos. With a presence in our co-working community, COgro, they are working on AI-driven chemistry for medicine.

2015 - Graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Chemistry from Auburn University.
2010 - Graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the College of Charleston.
Worked as a postdoctoral research associate for Georgia Institute of Technology, and worked as a software scientist at The Molecular Science Software institute in Blacksburg, VA.
Started at Entos in April of 2020 as co-founder and principal software engineer and is now the director of software.
Has a deep passion for computational chemistry, quantum chemistry, education, science, and technology.