Mike Ciholas, President and Founder of Ciholas Inc., obtained his master's degree from MIT in 1988 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, working in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developing novel stereo vision camera systems. He later joined the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT as a hardware engineer building high performance network interfaces and switches. Since 1993, Mike has operated Ciholas full time, developing innovative solutions to embedding intelligence into products from toys to robots, leading to multiple patents to date.

Mike is an avid instrument rated pilot and often flies himself on business and pleasure trips. His most unusual flight was delivering rescue robots on the day of 9/11 to New York in his airplane and then spending a week at the World Trade Center site assisting with search and rescue. A US citizen, he was born in Strasbourg, France, grew up in North Carolina and Kentucky, and has worked both on the East and West coasts before settling in Indiana.