As X’s Captain of Moonshots, Astro is responsible for steering X’s projects through the bumps and scrapes they meet along the road to reality. Prior to X, Astro founded and grew five companies including BodyMedia, which developed wearable body-monitoring devices. Before moving to the business world, Astro was an engineer and researcher for Phoenix Laser Technologies, Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems, and taught a Computer Science class at Stanford University. He holds a B.S. in computer science and an M.S. in symbolic and heuristic computation, both from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon where he was a recipient of the Hertz fellowship. Through his work as a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur, Astro holds many U.S. and international patents, related to hardware and software technology. He’s the successful author of three published books and an international speaker on technology and innovation.