Francesco Mondada was born on March 17, 1967 in Locarno, Switzerland. He received his M.Sc. in micro-engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 1991 and his Ph.D. in 1997. While working on his thesis, Mondada created the Khepera robot with his colleagues and co-founded the company K-Team, a primary developer of the Khepera. After serving as both president and CEO of K-Team for five years, Mondada returned to EPFL as a senior scientist. He is currently an adjunct professor of robotics at EPFL where his research concerns mostly the mechatronic design of mobile robots.