Biography
Chuck Thorpe has served as Clarkson's Dean of Arts and Sciences, as well as senior vice president and provost.
His undergraduate degree is a pre-med degree, a BA from North Park University, magna cum laude, in Natural Science.
Chuck spent the bulk of his career with the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute from 1979 to 2012, from Ph.D. student to Director of the Institute. His research group builds robot cars. The Navlab group built a self-driving car in 1989; drove autonomously across the US in 1995, and contributed to both DOD programs (the Autonomous Land Vehicle) and DOT efforts (the Automated Highway Demonstration and Single Vehicle Roadway Departure Countermeasures). Thorpe continues as Adjunct Professor of Robotics with Carnegie Mellon. He has over 120 refereed publications in robotics and supervised 20 Ph.D. students.
From 2004 – 2010 Thorpe was founding Dean and CEO of Carnegie Mellon Qatar, a branch campus in Doha, Qatar. CMUQ is sponsored by The Qatar Foundation. The Carnegie Mellon campus offers degrees in Business Administration, Computer Science, and Information Systems. CMUQ is part of Education City, along with branch campuses from Virginia Commonwealth, the Weill Cornell Medical School, Georgetown, Northwestern, and Texas A&M.
Upon returning from Qatar, in the 2011 – 2012 academic year, Thorpe was Assistant Director for Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President. In that role, he helped coordinate policy and budget across the administration, helping set policies for future initiatives including NSF, DOD, NIH, Department of Transportation, NASA, and Department of Agriculture. He was part of the White House team that created the National Advanced Manufacturing Initiative.
Thorpe has often been called to serve on scientific or advisory committees. He has served on four different studies for the National Academies, as well as national and international advisory committees.
He has been elected Fellow of his appropriate professional societies, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).