Anima Anandkumar
Karan Singh for BI; Courtesy of Anima Anandkumar
Tech

Anima Anandkumar

Bren Professor, CalTech
Anima Anandkumar
Karan Singh for BI; Courtesy of Anima Anandkumar
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Anandkumar, a former senior director of Nvidia's AI research, left the private sector last year to return full time to academia at CalTech, where she serves as a Bren professor in the computing and mathematical sciences department. Her lab focuses on tensors, which can help solve higher-order problems in AI, such as simulating fluids. She helped build an AI-based weather model and made it available as open source. She hopes that by figuring out how AI can better simulate the physical world, researchers can more accurately predict and alleviate the climate crisis.

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Helen Li covered artificial intelligence, venture capital and startups, and chips. Her work has previously appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rest of World, Wired, Prism, and Semafor. She is an avid solo traveler and NCAA gymnastics fan.