About

Usama Fayyad is Chairman at Open Insights focusing on AI, BigData strategy, and new business models for Data. He is the Inaugural Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University where he is also professor of computer science. He was Global Chief Data Officer at Barclays Bank in London (2013-2016) after launching a key tech startup accelerator in MENA (2010-2013) as Executive Chairman of Oasis500. He was Chairman/CEO/CTO at several Seattle/Silicon Valley tech startups and the first person to hold the title: Chief Data Officer when Yahoo! acquired his 2nd startup in 2004. He held leadership roles at Microsoft (1996-2000) and founded the Machine Learning Systems group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1989-1996) where he was awarded Caltech’s top Excellence in Research award & a U.S. Government medal from NASA. Usama published over 100 technical articles, holds over 30 patents, is a Fellow of both AAAI and ACM. He is a recipient of both the ACM SIGKDD Awards for Innovation and for Service. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and holds two BSE’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering, MSE Computer Engineering and M.Sc. in Mathematics.