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Meet the Team

TEAM

David Stark - Chief Marketing Officer
David STARK
CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER 

David is a growth marketer and B2B digital practitioner and CSPO with over 25 years of leadership experience building pipelines and optimizing marketing ecosystems for evolving brands and Fortune 50 companies such as IBM (IBM), Stratasys (SSYS), and 3D Systems (DDD). A hands-on leader and mentor, David thinks strategically about applying marketing capabilities to achieve goals, shape a brand’s reputation, and empower cross-functional teams.

About us Lucian Galescu - Director of Dialogue Research
Lucian Galescu
HEAD of PLANNING, REASONING & DIALOGUE RESEARCH 

Dr. Lucian Galescu is the Director of Dialogue Research at Openstream.ai®, where he focuses on plan-based conversational AI. Earlier, he was a research scientist with the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Dr. Galescu’s research has spanned a broad spectrum of topics in dialogue systems, natural language understanding, knowledge extraction, intention recognition, and statistical language modeling. He has a number of widely cited publications in conversational AI and holds two patents in related technologies.

About Us Gholamreza Haffari - Advisor
Gholamreza Haffari
HEAD OF SPEECH & LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

Associate Professor, Department of Data Science & AI, Monash University Data Futures Institute. Dr. Haffari’s work is focused on Artificial Intelligence and NLP, particularly in low-level perception and high-level reasoning under uncertainty, mainly from text and potentially from other data modalities such as vision and speech. His research tackles problems such as effective training of deep neural networks with minimal human supervision, particularly for low-resource natural languages. Dr. Haffari is an Australia Research Council Future Fellow.

Magnus Revang
Magnus Revang
CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER

With 25 years of rich experience in UX strategy, design, and groundbreaking market research in artificial intelligence, Magnus is an award-winning product leader. As a recognized thought leader in the fields of UX, AI, and Conversational Virtual Assistants. Magnus Revang leads Openstream’s Eva™(Enterprise Virtual Assistant) platform working with customers and driving the future of the platform.

About us Phil Cohen - Chief Scientist, Head-R&D
Phil Cohen 
Chief Scientist EMERITUS

Phil Cohen is a world-renowned expert in the fields of human-computer dialogue, multimodal interaction, and multiagent systems. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a past President of the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the recipient of the 2017 Sustained Accomplishment Award from the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI). He is also an Affiliate Professor of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

About Us Raj Tumuluri - Founder & CEO
Raj Tumuluri 
CEO & CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

Raj is an inventor and one of the pioneers in the industry with 20+ years of experience in building context-aware, multimodal and mobile technologies; principal architect & evangelist of Openstream’s product vision & strategy; Co-Author of W3C standards on Multi-modal & Speech standards & W3C Automotive Web.

Advisors

About Us Alex Waibel - Advisor
Alex Waibel
Advisor

Professor of Computer Science & Director InterACT at the Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Dr. Waibel is known for the time delay neural network (TDNN), the first convolutional neural network (CNN), and other neural learning algorithms for speech and language processing. He built the first dialogue speech translator, JANUS, and the first simultaneous translation service for lectures.

His startup, Jibbigo marketed the first speech translator on a phone (later acquired by Facebook). At Facebook, he founded and led the language technology group. Dr. Waibel is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the National Academy of Sciences of Germany and is the recipient of the Sustained Accomplishment Award from the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction.

Candy Sidner - Advisor
Candy sidner
Advisor

Candy Sidner is an MIT Ph.D. in Computer Science and a Research Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is the author of more than 100 research papers on interacting with intelligent agents and robots and on dialogue processing and is a Fellow of AAAI, ACL serves on multiple journal editorial boards on AI & NLP.

About Us Deborah Dahl - Advisor
Deborah Dahl 
Advisor

Deborah Dahl is the Principal of Conversational Technologies. She has over 20 years of experience in the fields of speech and natural language processing, dating back to her pioneering work at Unisys. Dr. Dahl serves as the Chair of the W3C's Multimodal Interaction Working Group, a member of the HTML5 Working Group, and the Web Accessibility Initiative's Protocols and Formats Working Group.

Dr. Dahl received the prestigious Speech Luminary Award from Speech Technology Magazine in 2012 and 2014. Dr. Dahl received a Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing from the University of Minnesota and the Alfred E. Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cognitive Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

About Us Elisabeth André - Advisor
Elisabeth André 
Advisor

Elisabeth André is a full professor (W3) of Computer Science and Founding Chair of Human-Centered AI at Augsburg University in Germany with a long track record in multimodal human-machine interaction, embodied conversational agents, social robotics, affective computing, and social signal processing. She has won many awards including the distinguished Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (aka German Nobel Prize). She is a member of the prestigious Academy of Europe, the German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, and the CHI Academy.

She was awarded a EurAI fellowship and was recently named one of the 10 most influential figures in the history of AI in Germany. She has been serving as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and as a co-speaker of the Bavarian Research Association for Digit Health. 

About Us James Allen - Advisor
James Allen
Advisor

James Allen has an appointment as the John H. Dessauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester and is Associate Director and a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Dr. Allen’s research concerns defining computational models of intelligent collaborative and conversational agents that can interact effectively with humans in a wide range of problem-solving and analysis tasks. He is a Fellow of AAAI, the Cognitive Science Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and winner of the Herbert A. Simon Prize for Advances in Cognitive Systems.

About Us Louis-Philippe Morency - Advisor
Louis-Philippe Morency 
Advisor

Louis-Philippe Morency ("LP") is Associate Professor in the Language Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he leads the Multimodal Communication and Machine Learning Laboratory (MultiComp Lab). He was formerly research faculty in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Southern California and received his Ph.D. degree from MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

His research focuses on building the computational foundations to enable computers with the abilities to analyze, recognize and predict subtle human communicative behaviors during social interactions. He received diverse awards including AI’s 10 to Watch by IEEE Intelligent Systems, NetExplo Award in partnership with UNESCO, and 10 best paper awards at IEEE and ACM conferences. His research was covered by media outlets such as Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and NPR.

About Us Michael Tessler - Head Strategy, Advisor
Michael Tessler
Advisor

Michael is a proven business leader and technology pioneer. As former CEO of BroadSoft, Michael led the company from its early beginnings to its successful exit to Cisco in 2018. Along with his co-founder, they led the creation of a new industry, moving enterprise communications to the cloud. Michael scaled the organization to 2,000 employees and served customers in over 80 countries. 

Michael looks to use his marketing, strategy, and selling skills to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses. Using his industry experience and network of global contacts, Michael is able to work side by side with these entrepreneurs helping them craft their strategies and their go-to-market activities.

About Us Ron Kaplan - Advisor
Ron Kaplan
ADVISOR

Adjunct Professor of Linguistics and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He has worked as VP & Chief Scientist at Amazon Search, VP & Distinguished Scientist at Nuance, Chief Scientist & Principal Researcher at the Powerset division of Microsoft Bing, and Research Fellow and Manager of Research in Natural Language Theory and Technology at the Palo Alto Research Center (formerly the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center).

Dr. Kaplan is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). He was a co-recipient of the ACM’s Software Systems Award and was given the ACL’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

About Us Stacy Marsella - Advisor
Stacy Marsella
ADVISOR

Professor of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. Before Northeastern he was a research professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California and a research director at the Institute for Creative Technologies. Previously, he held positions at USC’s Information Sciences Institute (1996-2009) and Bell Labs (1995-1996). His multidisciplinary research is grounded in the computational modeling of human cognition, emotion, and social behavior, as well as the evaluation of those models. Beyond its relevance to understanding human behavior, the work has seen numerous applications, including health interventions, social skills training, and planning operations. His applied work includes frameworks for large-scale social simulations of towns and a range of techniques and tools for creating virtual humans, facsimiles of people that can engage in face-to-face interactions. Dr.Marsella received an ACM SIIGART career award for his contributions to agent research and is an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, a board member of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and on the steering committee for Intelligent Virtual Agents. He is a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists and a member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the International Society for Research on Emotions.

About Us Willian S. Meisel - Advisor
WilliaM S. Meisel
ADVISOR

William ("Bill") Meisel is the President of TMA Associates, a consulting and publishing firm specializing in the impact of advanced speech technology and the changing role of the telephone on companies. Bill also serves as the Executive Director of the Applied Voice Input Output Society (AVIOS). His areas of expertise include Computer Oriented Approaches to Pattern Recognition, Effective Voice User Interface Design, and Speech User Interfaces. Bill received a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.

Board of directors

About Us Rama Eyunni - Vice-Chairman
Rama Eyunni  
director

Rama is a thought leader, influencer, and mentor in leveraging next-gen technologies- AI, Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, Robotics, Industry 4.0, IoT, and Smart Cities/Nations. 

About Us Sharad Hegde - Chairman
Sharad Hegde
director

Sharad is the first non-founder employee of Infosys and an industry expert with over 30 years of experience in the areas of architecture, design, and development for massive global software products and service implementations. Sharad is a graduate of IIT Chennai and a post-graduate of NITIE, Mumbai.

About Us Raj Tumuluri - Founder & CEO
Raj Tumuluri 
director

Raj is an inventor and one of the pioneers in the industry with 20+ years of experience in building context-aware, multimodal and mobile technologies; principal architect & evangelist of Openstream’s product vision & strategy; Co-Author of W3C standards on Multi-modal & Speech standards & W3C Automotive Web.

Rajeev-Kaul
Rajeev Kaul
director

Rajeev is a principal with the New York-based Kaul Group, a principal in Berkshire Ventures Corp., a founder of Underhill Technologies, Inc., a Board member of US India Friendship Alliance Inc and Women’s Empowerment Project, and an Executive Board member of the Indo-American Arts Council Inc.

Our Journey

Making Communications Smarter™

  • 2008
    Launched the world's 1st Multimodal Platform
  • 2011
    Recognized as a 'Cool Vendor' in context-aware computing by Gartner
  • 2012
    W3C Ratifies International Standard for Multimodal Interaction
  • 2013
    Launched Eva"(1st Enterprise Virtual Assistant Platform)
  • 2014
    451 Research featured Openstream Eva" as 'Google NowTM for enterprises
  • 2020
    Recognized by Gartner, Opus, Tractica and other leading analyst firms
  • 2021
    Eva at scale!
  • 2022
    Only visionary in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms
  • 2023
    Named to the KMWorld 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management
  • 2023
    Only Visionary in the Gartner® 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms
  • 2023
    eWeek recognizes Openstream.ai as one of the 100 Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Companies 2023