Phillip Alvelda

Dr. Alvelda is an experienced AI technology innovator, entrepreneur, and investor who has created several industry-defining companies across a career that started at NASA in 1986, designing spacecraft sensors and pioneering neural computation and AI algorithms and applications. Dr. Alvelda is the Managing Partner of Brainworks Ventures, a native-AI ventue capital fund with a charter to invest in native-AI startups. He is also the chairman of Infinite Entertainment, a company revolutionizing feature film, TV, and interactive media production. Prior to Infinite, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO of next-gen clinical diagnostics company Medio Labs, which applied the latest AI technologies to address the pandemic. The diagnostic company spun out of Dr. Alvelda’s AI company incubator, the Brainworks Foundry. The Foundry grew out of Dr. Alvelda’s stint in the Obama Administration's DARPA | Biological Technologies Office where he developed national-scale R&D programs and technologies at the intersection of AI and neuroscience, where he catalyzed the Brain-Machine Interface Industry. Prior to Medio Labs, Brainworks, and DARPA, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO of MobiTV, which launched the world's first live TV experience over mobile networks. For this work, Dr. Alvelda was awarded an Emmy, selected by Fast Company as the US's 15th most influential high-tech entrepreneur, and has received numerous other industry awards from AlwaysOn, CNET, Mobile Entertainment (One of the top 20 most influential New Media Executives), and Red Herring for innovation and market leadership. He is a regular invited speaker at media, telecom, and education industry events including the World Economic Forum where he was chosen as a "Technology Pioneer" in 2007. Prior to MobiTV, Dr. Alvelda founded The MicroDisplay Corporation, a manufacturer of miniature displays for low cost HDTVs & VR headsets. Prior to MicroDisplay, Dr. Alvelda was a developer of spacecraft hardware and new AI & computing architectures at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he: designed and built ai-enhanced sensors that flew on the Space Shuttle and the Galileo and Magellan interplanetary spacecraft, and developed two new generations of brain-inspired AI systems for spacecraft sensing and control. Dr. Alvelda holds over 30 patents and patents-pending on a wide range of technologies, a technical Emmy Award, a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell University, and Masters and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.