Sharad Sundararajan

Sharad C Sundararajan is Co-founder and Chief Software Officer of Merlyn Mind, Inc., an AI company building the first multimodal digital assistant for education with a focus on helping teachers. He brings over two decades of industry experience in semiconductors, AI and education technology to help solve global challenges in education. His work has resulted in 17 patents. At Watson Education in IBM Research, he led a team that was instrumental in the conceptualization and development of the Watson Tutor^TM, a conversational intelligent tutoring system aimed at improving student engagement and learning outcomes. A big proponent of multiple representations, he led research on various interactive technologies such as AR/VR to improve student learning experiences. Prior to his entry into the EdTech domain, he spent 14 years in the semiconductor space at IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (Electronic Design Automation division) designing and developing several compiler and logic optimizations (time, area, power) for server and ASIC chips that resulted in him receiving an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement award. He earned a Master’s in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a specialization in Logic & AI.

He has sought (and continues to seek) ways to benefit humanity either via participation in philanthropies working in education, human rights and water issues or by exploring the transformative power of technology to change human lives.