Google’s parent Alphabet is gaining back a robotics whiz — again: The company confirms that Yoky Matsuoka, who left in 2015, is coming back as CTO of Nest, its smart-home subsidiary. Bloomberg first reported the news.
Matsuoka was an executive at Nest when Google acquired the company in 2014. She later left to be CEO of health-data startup Quanttus, where she worked for about a year, according to her LinkedIn profile. She joined Apple in 2016 to work on its health initiatives, according to Bloomberg, but did not stay long.
According to a bio provided by Nest, Matsuoka worked in professorial roles at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Washington before entering the private sector. At UW, she worked on robotic devices “for rehabilitating and assisting the human body and brain.”
Matsuoka was a founding member of Google X in 2009, before becoming VP of technology at Nest, which was then a startup.
Nest said Matsuoka had already started her new role and that the subsidiary did not have anyone previously in the role of CTO. Matsuoka did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Additional reporting by Ina Fried.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.