Awards, People

Box Bot, co-founded by alum, wins Pear challenge

By Public Affairs

Austin Oehlerking and Mark Godwin
Box Bot co-founders Mark Godwin, right, with Austin Oehlerking
Austin Oehlerking and Mark Godwin

Box Bot co-founders Mark Godwin, right, with Austin Oehlerking

Mark Godwin, while pursuing his Ph.D. in transportation controls at UC Berkeley, worked with drones, self-driving cars and logistics. Now, he is a co-founder and CTO of Box Bot, which just won Pear Ventures’ 2016-17 UC Berkeley Startup Challenge, which awards $250,000 to a startup founded by students, alumni or professors from Berkeley.

Box Bot is a robotic service that automates the logistics of last-mile delivery, significantly reducing delivery costs and improving the experience for customers.

As a result of its Pear Ventures win, Box Bot will become part of Pear’s portfolio and community and Pear Ventures, a Bay Area-based venture capital firm, will help the startup accelerate growth and realize its vision.

“Berkeley has always been a place for innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the years I have enjoyed seeing entrepreneurship become an increasingly popular path for faculty, students and staff. I am proud to be part of a new generation helping to take Berkeley entrepreneurship to the next level,” said Godwin.

While at Berkeley, Godwin built drones for the Office of Naval Research and competed in the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge. After graduation, Mark founded a startup to make transportation networks more efficient with machine learning.

His partner in Box Bot is Austin Oehlerking, the company’s co-founder and CEO, who started working on electric vehicles and robotics at MIT and has worked with Arcimoto, a startup developing electric commuter vehicles in Oregon, along with Tesla.

Box Bot was featured in a recent article on Tech Crunch .

Read more about the Pear challenge on the Berkeley Innovators website