Robbie Mandelbaum

Robert “Robbie” Mandelbaum is Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at SRI. ​He is responsible for driving SRI’s major growth initiatives, mobilizing capabilities across the divisions to create, scale, and lead new institute-wide programs.

Mandelbaum brings 30 years of experience in advanced technology R&D, with a proven track record for creating visionary concepts for emerging markets and translating generation-after-next technologies into fielded capabilities across government and commercial customers. He works with leadership, principal investigators, and business development to pursue major programs at the intersection of strategic customer needs and SRI’s broad capabilities in areas including AI, autonomous systems, healthcare, space-based architectures, and security.

Prior to SRI, Mandelbaum served as program manager and director at Sarnoff Corporation, where he led the Commercial Vision business unit and helped pioneer applications of real-time computer vision, including early concepts for self-driving cars, robotic autonomy, and ISR.

Mandelbaum then served as Program Manager in the Information Processing Techniques (I2O) and Tactical Technologies (TTO) offices at DARPA. He built a reputation for standing up entirely new capability areas, initiating and managing the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) and Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) programs, and managing BigDog, a legged robot that broke the world record for autonomous distance traveled on varied terrain.

Most recently, Mandelbaum served as Managing Director of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories, leading a group of applied research labs focused on maintaining the Corporation’s technology dominance across spectrum systems, informatics, AI, human systems augmentation, and autonomy. He previously served as ATL CTO, setting technical direction, managing research investments, and serving as a technical liaison to customers including the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and DARPA, unifying teams across multiple organizations.

Mandelbaum obtained his PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and his BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand.