Genealogy code N X v.3.2
By: Sara Korber-DeWeerd
Source: Gordon John Vreugdenhil
Photo: Gordon John Vreugdenhil
Gordon Vreugdenhil has always enjoyed applying innovative solutions to the challenge of a difficult problem. He works as a senior manager for NVIDIA, a leading company in the field of computer usage and artificial intelligence. Vreugdenhil leads a team involved in safety processes at NVIDIA.
“The products I work on are the components actually used in cars, both for driving assistance and various levels of autonomous driving,” he explains. Vreugdenhil mentions that as a student, he was a bit of an exception. He graduated a full semester earlier from high school in Trenton, Ontario. In addition to majoring in computer science and mathematics, he also studied secondary education, philosophy, and theology.
The same curiosity and desire to understand led him through eight years of schooling at the University of Waterloo, where he earned a Ph.D. in computer science. As he neared the end of his studies, he and his wife, Janet Cok, planned their next steps, choosing the Pacific Northwest for its climate and job opportunities. They moved to the Portland, Oregon area, where they still reside. Today, as a manager in a pioneering industry, Vreugdenhil takes his leadership and supervision seriously, applying his Christian worldview to every aspect.
His calling lies at the intersection of faith, invention, innovation, and change. “It’s exceptionally complex work,” Vreugdenhil admits, “but there is a lot of value in it.”He emphasizes that our relationships with others and with creation should all be based on faith. “But technology is not God. Technology is not what saves us.” His words reflect those of Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher who wrote in the mid-19th century, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Thoreau described the newly laid railroads crisscrossing the North American landscape, dramatically changing modern life. But in Thoreau’s words, it’s the same concern that Vreugdenhil mentions: the potential for technology to take precedence over the people it is intended for. Prioritizing human lives interacting with autonomous, self-driving cars is the guiding principle of the company. “We didn’t just develop the technology, sell it to customers, and say, ‘Here, put it in your own car,'”
Vreugdenhil explains. Instead, they acquired vehicles and performed complete system integration, testing the technology themselves. Vreugdenhil describes a time when one of their cars saved an employee’s life during a test drive. The employee was driving the vehicle in the ‘guardian angel mode,’ a situation where the driver controls the car, but if the vehicle detects danger, it responds. “It prevented her from being hit by another vehicle at an intersection,” he says. Vreugdenhil considers transparency about the self-driving technology the company develops as important as safety.
He remains humble, describing his life path as ‘normal’ and ‘nothing exceptional.’ Except that it is.