Chris Gerdes is the first chief innovation officer at the United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT).

In this role, he works with the Secretary of Transportation to foster the culture of innovation across U.S. DOT and find ways to support transportation innovation taking place both inside and outside of government. He serves as an internal champion for innovation and idea generation and as a departmental resource for problem-solving approaches, advanced research, automation, and connected vehicles.

Gerdes is serving at U.S. DOT while on leave from Stanford University, where he is a professor of mechanical engineering. His laboratory studies how cars move, how humans drive cars, and how to design future cars that work cooperatively with the driver or drive themselves. Vehicles in the lab include X1, an entirely student-built test vehicle; Shelley, an automated Audi TT-S that can lap a racetrack as quickly as an expert driver; and MARTY, an electrified DeLorean capable of controlled drifts.