Philippe Villers
Encyclopedia
Computervision
Computervision, Inc. was an early pioneer in turnkey Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing . Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. Its early products were built on a Data General Nova platform...
with Marty Allen in 1969. In 1980 he co-founded Automatix
Automatix
Automatix Inc., founded in January 1980, was the first company to market industrial robots with built-in machine vision. Its founders were Victor Scheinman, inventor of the Stanford arm; Phillippe Villers, Michael Cronin, and Arnold Reinhold of Computervision; Jake Dias and Dan Nigro of Data...
, an early robotics company, which he led until 1986. He later served as president of Cognition Corporation for 3 years. He is currently (2008) president of GrainPro, Inc., and board member of a number of high-tech startups, as well as president of Families USA
Families USA
Families USA is an American non-profit consumer health-care advocacy organization. It was co-founded by attorney Ronald Pollack, its current executive director, and Philippe Villers, the organization's current President....
Foundation, which he endowed. http://www.voxiva.net/board.asp
Villers was born in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and came to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a child. He earned a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and an S.M. in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1960. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Lowell
University of Massachusetts Lowell
The University of Massachusetts Lowell is a public university in Lowell, Massachusetts, and part of the University of Massachusetts system...
.