AEye Advisory Board Profile: Tim Shiple – I wish I had more to offer

We sat down with each of our Advisory Board Members to ask them why they’re excited about working with AEye…

Tim Shiple
Mr. Shiple has 30 years of experience in roles such as Chief Operations Officer and Chief Supply Chain Officer. His experience includes: Portfolio management, Procurement, Finance, Operations, M&A, ERP, and Product Hardware & Software Development. At Google, he led Supply Chain and Quality and Customer Care initiatives. As the Senior Executive in charge of M&A with Ecolab, Mr. Shiple helped improve their performance and manage identification of acquisition synergies. Mr. Shiple earned a bachelor’s degree in business at Spring Arbor University. He received Executive Management and Leadership education at Columbia University.

Q: What in your past experience ultimately drew you to the autonomous vehicle arena?

With over 15 years of experience in the automotive industry and another 12 years in technology, I’ve found that the development of autonomous vehicles is the perfect intersection of my experience and interests.

Q: Why AEye?

Because of my experience in automotive and technology, I’m able to spot a lucrative startup in those fields. AEye is one of those.

Talking to many key players in the automotive industry and the autonomous space — such as Tier 1s and OEMs who are trying to assess their positioning and their technology — has given me the unique ability to find a promising startup and help it grow and mature, while also providing resources and connections on both sides of the industry.

Q: Where do you see ADAS solutions, autonomous vehicles, and/or artificial perception, heading within the next few years? The next decade? Beyond? How do you see AEye playing a pivotal role in this vision?

As perception layers become more important to automotive companies, Tier 1s will certainly include AEye’s advanced artificial perception system, iDAR, in the ADAS systems they’re developing. In the short term, I see that the industry will first make better safety systems for ADAS, which will eventually lead us through the 5 levels of autonomy.

But I’m not just referring to self-driving cars. This will include planes, trains, and other vehicles, many of which will usher us into a new dimension of transportation. We’ll begin to not only see self-driving vehicles on the road, but in the air, which will get us to where we need to go faster, and in a more economic way. The flying vehicle promise will be fulfilled sooner than we think, and AEye will play a pivotal role in perception for these vehicles every step of the way.

AEye Advisory Board Profile: Tim Shiple —