Kommy Weldemariam

Dr. Kommy Weldemariam is a distinguished engineer and technology leader with extensive experience in developing and bringing advanced technology research projects to market. His work applied to various domains, including sustainability, agriculture, healthcare, smarter planet, education, financial services, and public sector transformation. Kommy's expertise lies in systems, data and analytics ecosystems, and artificial intelligence. He is also an inventor with over 300+ patents (in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchains, Internet of Things (IoT), and Security). Additionally, he has authored more than 100 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and top conference proceedings, and has delivered several keynote speeches at international scientific venues. Currently, Kommy serves as the Chief Architect for Discovery Science and Applications in IBM Research. In this role, he is responsible for the architectural specialization, augmentation, and integration of foundational. technologies, as well as early product validation across Climate and Sustainability, Healthcare and Life Sciences, and Computing.

In the past, Kommy has (co)led numerous research and engineering programs and contributed to new products in various fields such as trade logistics, agriculture, global health, small/medium-sized tech companies, startups, and personalized education space. Examples of projects that he has (co-)led or been involved in have been widely covered in the press.

• IBM watsonx.ai geospatial foundation models, Hugging Face
• IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite, IBM
• The Digital Future of Agriculture, The Economics
• IBM Africa and Hello Tractor pilot AI/blockchain agtech platform, TechCrunch
• IBM Launches Accelerator Program to Kickstart Blockchain Adoption for Enterprises, The Tech Revolutionist
• Blockchain: A Better Way to Track Pork Chops, Bonds, Bad Peanut Butter?, NYTimes
• How African Schools Are Using Cognitive Systems To Help Shape The Future Of Education, Forbes
• Do you want to learn, or pass exams? There is actually a difference, and this cool tech tries to achieve both, Mail Guardian Africa

Prior to joining IBM, Kommy was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Computing, Queen's University (Canada) where he focused on designing tools and techniques for automated analysis, characterization, and detection of malicious activities on the Web. He was a Research Scientist (with a tenure-track title) at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento - Italy. At FBK, Kommy was involved in the development, evaluation, and formal verification of security/safety-critical systems (such as Electronic Voting Systems). In addition, he was involved in the development of novel ways of using technology to foster economic and social development, often targeting areas characterized by low penetration of ICT. He was a contractual Professor at the Dept. of Information Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Trento  (Italy) and a visiting researcher in the Security Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara CA (USA).

Kommy is an elected member of the IBM Industry Academy (2021),  IBM Master Inventor (2017 - present), won the Kifra Prize Award (2020), Fellow of the Next Einstein Forum (2016), and the Young Scientist World Economic Forum (2015). He received a B.S. from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), a M.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India), and a Ph.D. from the University of Trento (Italy), all in Computer Science.

Additional details:

• Publications: DBLP listing or Google scholar
• Patents: Google patents