Tae Rugh

I’m a cofounder at Clippership, where we’re building autonomous cargo sailboats to decarbonize and improve the maritime shipping industry. I want to make a positive impact on the world by solving engineering problems with a first principles approach.

I studied at the University of California, Irvine, where I majored in mechanical engineering and minored in computer science. I also interned at Xos and Tesla, where I worked on battery testing machines, prototype vehicles, and robotic arms. I spent a year as a masters student at Carnegie Mellon, where I studied controls and robotics, advised by Zac Manchester at the Robotic Exploration Lab in the Robotics Institute, before taking a leave of absence to pursue Clippership.