Secondmind appoints Professor Carl Edward Rasmussen as Chief Scientist

• Rasmussen is a world-leading authority on Gaussian Processes, reinforcement learning and probabilistic inference
• New operational role comes as Secondmind enters new phase of growth
• The renowned University of Cambridge professor of machine learning retains Secondmind Chairmanship
  

Secondmind has appointed Carl Edward Rasmussen as its first Chief Scientist. In this new role, Carl will oversee Secondmind’s Research Leadership team, focused on delivering world-leading research in Artificial Intelligence and decision-making.

Carl, who has served as Chairman of Secondmind since 2016, will maintain this position alongside his new role. Carl is also professor in the Machine Learning Group and head of the Computational and Biological Learning Lab at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Carl is a world leading authority on Gaussian Processes, reinforcement learning and probabilistic inference. Carl’s academic career includes positions at the Technical University of Denmark, the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen.

Carl is the co-author of Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning (MIT Press, 2006), which is universally considered to be the most foundational and influential textbook in the field. His expertise will advance the work of Secondmind’s research team, which has generated 38 peer-reviewed published research papers and filed 8 patents to date.

The company is now entering a new period of growth - applying this research expertise towards helping companies make better decisions in processing dynamic, real time data in complex and uncertain environments. Creating Secondmind’s Decision Engine has required a unique, integrated approach – combining branches of mathematics, engineering and economic theory.

Vishal Chatrath, Co-founder and CEO of Secondmind, said, “We are very excited to have Carl’s expertise focused on solving some of the hardest engineering challenges in AI at Secondmind. Carl set the technical vision for the company when he joined as Chairman. As Chief Scientist, Carl can be fully engaged in a more hands-on way to deliver our technical vision to drive improvements for our customers and partners. Carl brings great credibility as the founding father of Gaussian Processes, probabilistic models that help machines deal with uncertain and complex environments, with sparse or partial sources of data, and can learn from experience. Our focus is to help businesses make good decisions, with smaller data sets in real time. This is an urgent business need and hugely relevant for our customers in logistics, finance and education.”

Carl Edward Rasmussen added, “I am thrilled to have been appointed Chief Scientist at Secondmind. Throughout my career I have focused on the theory and practice of building systems that learn and make decisions. At Secondmind we are focused on developing a Decision Engine that can make useful inferences about what actions to take, alongside explaining how it made those decisions. Fortunately, probability and information theory provide a mathematically principled and practical approach to advance this. By leading the research teams at Secondmind, my focus will be turning the science into real life applications for customers.”