Lawrence D. Burns
Former General Motors executive, author
Lawrence D. Burns is a former General Motors research and planning executive and co-author of Autonomy, a book about the race to create the self-driving car.
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About Lawrence D. Burns
Lawrence D. Burns, known as Larry, was corporate vice president of research and development and planning at General Motors from 1998 to 2009. His remit covered advanced technology, planning for the product range and capacity, and company strategy. He later held a professorship in engineering practice at the University of Michigan and advised the Google self-driving car project, which became Waymo. He holds a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Burns co-wrote Reinventing the Automobile and Autonomy. Autonomy tells the story of the effort to build the driverless car and how it may reshape the world.