Dr. Alexander D. Wissner-Gross is an award-winning computer scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. He serves as Founder and Managing Partner of Reified and has taught at Harvard and MIT. He has received 128 major distinctions, authored 24 publications, been granted 26 issued, pending, and provisional patents, and founded, advised, and invested in more than 33 technology companies. In 1998 and 1999, respectively, he won the USA Computer Olympiad and the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2003, he became the last person in MIT history to earn a triple major, with bachelor’s degrees in Physics, Electrical Science and Engineering, and Mathematics, and graduated first in his class from the MIT School of Engineering with a Marshall Scholarship. In 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard, where his research on neuromorphic computing, machine learning, and programmable matter was awarded the Hertz Foundation’s Doctoral Thesis Prize.

A thought leader in artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems, he is a contributing author of the New York Times Science Bestseller This Idea Must Die and the Amazon #1 New Release What to Think About Machines That Think. A popular TED speaker, his talks have been viewed more than 2 million times and translated into 27 languages. His work has been featured in more than 200 press outlets worldwide, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNN, USA Today, and Wired.