Anima Anandkumar

The fact that Anima is devoted to stretching the reach of artificial intelligence speaks for itself. And she has earned a multiplicity of awards in recognition of her efforts towards the same. Working in tandem with Yisong Yue, she founded the AI4science initiative at Caltech in 2018. The work of this initiative is to connect AI and data science experts with scholars in engineering and science fields. Together with Jean Kossaifi et al., Anima also founded TensorLy to provide software support for tensor operations in Python. You may have also seen her in documentaries and media outlets, including Forbes, Wired, and PBS, to mention but a few.

As well as holding high-profile industry positions and working as an academic, Anima is also an advocate for the responsible use of AI. How she manages to strike a balance between the two worlds is surprising, but that’s precisely what she was born to do. Specifically, she has been vocal against selling face recognition services to law enforcement agencies. In her view, the technology still needs more refining to deliver accurate results. Anima was also at the forefront of the #ProtestNIPS campaign, which ensured the rebranding of the Neural Information Processing Systems, now known as NeurIPS.