WHO WE ARE / Investment Professionals
Sven Strohband
An engineer at heart, Sven Strohband is a Partner at Mohr Davidow focused on energy storage and solar technologies in Cleantech and on machine learning and complex systems in Information Technology.
Sven joined the firm in 2005 after three years at the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) in Palo Alto. At the ERL he was responsible for discovering new materials and electronics technologies for automotive applications. While at Volkswagen he led teams that built novel electrochromic glass for passenger vehicles, LED front lighting solutions for Audi, novel user interfaces for human-car interactions, RFID solutions for parts tracking in the production process and autonomous vehicles. Sven has authored numerous papers on the simulation of materials systems and authored various patents for novel automotive electronics applications.
“A love of technology, respect for the art of engineering and design, the fearlessness to tackle truly hard challenges by exceptional entrepreneurs are the ingredients to revolutionize the world.”
He is a frequent judge for Cleantech and IT competitions such as the Cleantech Open competition, BASES in Stanford and the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Challenge.
Contact
Sven Strohband
Facts & Statistics
- Sven received a doctorate and master's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University where he spent most of his time between the Materials Science Department and the Computer Science Department writing software to simulate the failure of semiconductor structures. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.
- He was also the Stanford Racing Team's lead engineer while at Volkswagen in Palo Alto. That team developed a robot that successfully navigated 132 miles of unknown terrain fully autonomously in the fastest time, winning the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The vehicle, “Stanley,” now resides in the Smithsonian Institution as part of the National Museum of American History.
- Favorite Quotes:
- A scientist discovers that which exists. An engineer creates that which never was. —Theodore von Karman
- "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" —Isaac Asimov
