Technology

Posted on May 4, 2018 by staff

Who is Manuela Veloso, the new AI boss at J.P. Morgan?

Technology

J.P. Morgan has appointed Dr. Manuela Veloso as the head of artificial intelligence research.

But who is the new hire set to join the corporate and investment bank in July?

Veloso is an international expert in artificial intelligence and robotics. She is the head of the machine learning department and a university professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Veloso has been honoured as an Einstein Chair Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has previously been president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and of the RoboCup Federation.

In 1996 she and her colleagues created the RoboCup, a ‘Robot Soccer World Cup’, which still runs today. Its aim is to bring advancements in AI and robotics to the mainstream by pitting teams of robot football players against each other in fully FIFA compliant matches.

AI is one of the areas of investment within J.P. Morgan’s annual technology budget which stands at $10.8bn, (£7.9bn) half of which is earmarked for new investments.

Her past students include Juan Pablo Mendoza, who in December last year joined Waymo, the autonomous car development company formerly known as the Google self-driving car project.

The Pennsylvania-based professor, who speaks five languages and has been featured in publication such as The Verge, Wired magazine and MIT Technology Review, greets her campus visitors with a ‘cobot’, an autonomous robot designed by her and her team at the university.

“We have assembled talented teams to drive innovation in artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, big data, machine learning and bots, with the objectives of improving our efficiency and enabling us to serve more clients with greater effectiveness, depth and sophistication,” said Daniel Pinto, the J.P. Morgan’s co-president.