Oscar Salazar, a Co-Founder of Uber, Named to Aira Technology Advisory Board
Oscar Salazar, a co-founder of Uber and currently Chief Product Officer and a co-founder of Pager, an app that allows New Yorkers to request at-home visits from doctors and nurses, has been appointed to the Technology Advisory Board of Aira. He joins a growing cadre of prominent innovators who are serving as Aira Board members to help guide the company in its mission to develop leading remote assistive technology that enhances the independence and mobility of blind and low-vision individuals.
While at Uber (the noted international mobile ride request company), Salazar served as Uber´s founding CTO and third co-founder alongside Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. He also helped build Uber´s first prototype. In addition to his current position at Pager, Salazar is also Chief Technology Advisor at Ride, a new ride-sharing app for commuters, as well as CEO and Co-Founder of CitiVox, a message board social platform for the mobile web designed to bring communities together.
His experience with Uber and related technologies will assist Aira in applying such advances to assist blind and low-vision individuals, especially in the company´s goal to leveraging advanced Uber-style dispatch systems architectures in positioning Aira technology to scale, and to adapt artificial intelligence (AI) into its platform, says Aira Co-Founder & CEO Suman Kanuganti. ¨We are very fortunate to have Oscar as our newest Board member, including his insight into how to apply this knowledge to developing personalized, user-friendly services and technology that benefit the visually impaired.¨
In advising Aira, Salazar also joins other prominent innovators to Aira´s Boards, such as the legendary Ray Kurzweil (a Director of Engineering at Google who is noted for inventing such technologies as the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind — aptly known as the Ray Kurzweil Reading Machine — and developing technology´s ¨Law of Accelerating Returns¨ theory), and Dean Kamen (founder of the high-tech firm Deka and holder of over 440 patents, including for the electric-powered Segway human transporter, iBOT the battery-powered wheelchair, and an advanced prosthetic arm).
