Dr. Ronjon Nag is an inventor, entrepreneur, and Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute Interdisciplinary Fellow based at the Stanford Center for Language and Information (CSLI). He is the founder of the R42 Institute, which focuses on inventing, informing, and investing, and he is also a founder, advisor, and board member of multiple startups, with exits to companies including Apple, BlackBerry, and Motorola. He received the Mountbatten Medal from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and was a winner (as Chairman of Bounce Imaging) of the $1M Verizon Powerful Answers Award.
He is widely recognized as a pioneer in smartphones and early “app store” ecosystems, and has worked across neural networks, touchscreens, mobile search, voice recognition, text prediction, and handwriting recognition.
Key contributions include early systems for predictive text, handwriting, and speech recognition (leading to billions of installs), as well as early app store and mobile distribution systems. His work includes milestones such as early speech recognition laptops (1984), commercial handwriting recognition systems (1991), early speech-enabled phones and Chinese speech recognition systems (1996), predictive text systems in multiple languages (1997), early mobile app distribution platforms (2000), and later work in cloud AI systems and smart devices.
He has also founded and contributed to companies working on neural networks in the cloud, mobile AI systems, and novel sensing devices.