David Ferrucci

Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Dr. Dave Ferrucci is an award-winning Artificial Intelligence researcher who started and led the IBM Watson team from its inception through its landmark Jeopardy success in 2011. Dr. Ferrucci’s more than 25 years in AI and his passion to see computers fluently think, learn, and communicate inspired him to found Elemental Cognition in 2015. Elemental Cognition is an AI company focused on deep natural language understanding. It explores methods of learning that result in explicable models of intelligence and their cross-industry applications.

Dr. Ferrucci graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He has over a 100 patents and publications. He is an IBM Fellow and has worked at IBM Research and Bridgewater Associates directing their AI research. He has keynoted at highly distinguished venues around the world. Dr. Ferrucci serves as a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.