Gunnar Carlsson is one of the most renowned mathematicians in the world with his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and doctorate from Stanford. Over the past 35 years, Gunnar has taught at University of Chicago, University of California, Princeton University, and since 1991, Gunnar has been a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, where he has been a thought leader in a branch of mathematics called topology, the study of shape. In the theoretical sense, topology has been around since the 1700’s, but Gunnar pioneered the applied use of topology to solve complex real world problems starting in the late 1990’s. In the early 2000’s, this work led to $10M in research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and DARPA to study the application of Topological Data Analysis (TDA) to problems of interest within the U.S. government. In 2008, based on the success of these efforts, Gunnar, along with two other Stanford mathematicians, co-founded Ayasdi.

Ayasdi is where Artificial Intelligence meets your Big Data. Ayasdi offers a machine intelligence platform that helps organizations gain transformative advantage from big data. The company enables its users to solve their big data and complex data analytics challenges and to automate formerly manual processes using their own unique data. Its machine intelligence platform combines scalable computing and big data infrastructure with the machine learning, statistical and geometric algorithms, and topological data analysis to increase its productivity. The company’s clientele is comprised of Global 500 corporations, governments, and scientific research institutions. It is licensed on an annual subscription basis.

Gunnar is married, has 3 grown boys including two sons who are mathematicians, and lives in Palo Alto.