AMNON SHASHUA

Chosen because: Israel-based Mobileye became a prominent name in the self-driving conversation when it partnered with Tesla Motors to provide camera sensors for its Autopilot semiautonomous driving technology. Though the companies dissolved their relationship in July, Mobileye and Amnon Shashua, 56, have continued to develop vision systems for autonomous vehicles, working with more than a dozen automakers to provide sensor technology. Shashua is also a computer science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in computer vision and machine learning.