Gregory L. Dudek
Gregory L. Dudek (born 16 February 1959, Montreal) is a Canadian roboticist, computer scientist, and technology entrepreneur whose research on mobile, marine, and foundation-model-powered robots has pushed field robotics from laboratory demonstrations to real-world deployments. He is Distinguished James McGill Chair in McGill University’s School of Computer Science, co-director of the Mobile Robotics Laboratory, author of the standard text Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics, and pairs academic leadership with industrial impact as co-founder / CTO of Independent Robotics and founding Vice-President of the Samsung AI Center–Montréal (2019-24).
Early life and education
Dudek is the only child of Louis Dudek—modernist poet, small-press pioneer, and Officer of the Order of Canada—and clinical psychologist Stephanie Zuperko Dudek. After Louis’s death, his mother married Fred Thomas Martin (1927 – 2022), an Oakland-born abstract-expressionist painter and long-time administrator at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Dudek earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics & Computer Science from Queen’s University (1980), followed by an M.Sc. in Computer Architecture at the University of Toronto under Carl Hamacher and Ric Holt (1982), and a Ph.D. in Computer Vision with John K. Tsotsos (1991).
Academic leadership
- Director, McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines (2004 – 07)
- Director, McGill School of Computer Science (2008 – 16)
- Founding Scientific Director, NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network (2012 – 25; project completed in 2025)
- General Chair, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2019 — first edition held in Canada
Research highlights
- Pioneering complexity bounds that coined and clarified the notion of robot localisation
- Advances in multi-sensor mapping, probabilistic road-maps, and curiosity-driven multi-robot exploration
- Lead creator of the Aqua amphibious robot family — the first legged robot to both walk and swim, now a staple of reef-monitoring missions
- Originator of the “3FM” framework — using foundation models for planning, monitoring, and self-healing in robust field robots
Former students now faculty
| University | Former student | Focus area |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Nicholas Roy | Robust aerial & autonomous systems |
| University of Toronto | Florian Shkurti | Robot vision & learning |
| University of Minnesota | Junaed Sattar | Underwater & HRI robotics |
| University of Delaware | Ioannis Rekleitis | Marine & multi-robot systems |
Industrial & policy impact
- Founding VP Research & Lab Head, Samsung AI Center–Montréal (2019 – 24)
- Co-founder & CTO, Independent Robotics Inc. — commercialising Aqua-class platforms for defence, science, and offshore inspection
- Advisor to Transport Canada, National Defence, and recent U.S.–Canada AI-defence initiatives
Honours and awards (selected)
- IEEE Gold Medal for sensing & navigation in field robotics (2017)
- CS-CAN / INFO-CAN Lifetime Achievement Award (2024)
- Acfas J.-Armand-Bombardier Technological Innovation Prize (2010)
- CIPPRS Awards for Research Excellence & Community Service (2010)
- IEEE RAS Distinguished Lecturer (2008 – 11) and elected RAS AdCom member (2024)
Professional service & outreach
Co-founder of the Robotics: Science & Systems conference; former editor for The International Journal of Robotics Research and Autonomous Robots; frequent guest in IEEE Spectrum, Scientific American, and The New York Times. His TEDx talk on amphibious robots has surpassed half a million views.
Personal life
Dudek lives in Montreal with his spouse Christine Warchol Dudek and divides downtime between a Laurentian lakeside cottage—where he windsurfs, 3-D prints Aqua prototypes on a Bambu Lab X1C, and tests new autonomy stacks—and family visits with daughter Natasha (partner Dmitriy Rivkin; son Louis, b. 2024) and son Nicholas (partner Camille). Classic Star Trek reruns are fair game; Deep Space Nine remains politely skipped.