Team
Hello there!
Welcome to our part of the world. Headquartered in Berlin, with our main dev office in Sofia, we are a highly distributed international team of overachievers and weirdos. We never take the easy way out, mainly because we let societal impact drive our strategic decisions. And while ‘making the world better’ sounds like such a cliché, we try to do that – one happy scientist at a time.
Background
Iris.ai was founded at Singularity University at NASA Ames Research park summer 2015. Challenged to come up with an idea that would positively impact the lives of 1 billion people, the team was formed and problem areas were explored. We soon found a common frustration with the access to and passion for the value of scientific knowledge, and as such Iris.ai – named after the Greek messenger goddess, bringing messages from the gods to the people – was born.
Today
Per early 2018 we’ve become a team of 20 driven, smart and passionate people (if we may say so ourselves) – we are also all a little eclectic and really geeky.
We speak at least 14 languages fluently, live in 9 different countries and count more than 40% women.
… and yes, we can count, but the picture below was taken at the last full team get-together when we were substantially fewer than 20 people.
The Founders
Anita Schjøll Brede
CEO
Anita is a serial-entrepreneur with 4 previous startups under her belt, including both in Silicon Valley, Sweden and Norway. She has studied at 6 different universities including Stanford and Berkeley, and finished her Master’s in Entrepreneurship and Business design at Chalmers University of Technology. Anita is one of Inspiring Fifty Nordic’s most Inspiring women in tech, twice TEDx speaker and 500 startups, SU Global Grand Challenges Awards and TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield alumni. At Iris.ai Anita heads up all communications and community efforts.
Victor Botev
CTO
Victor studied individual Master’s degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Systems and Networks at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski and Chalmers University of Technology, respectively. After his degree he stayed at Chalmers, he conducted research on clustering and predictive neural networks models and the usage of signal processing techniques in studying Big Data. At Iris.ai, he is responsible for the technology, research & development team, as well as overall product development for both the AI and Blockchain efforts. Current R&D efforts focus on unsupervised machine learning for hierarchical concept extraction as well as Project Aiur.
Maria Ritola
CCO
Maria heads up the commercial collaborations and business development at Iris.ai, including working hand in hand with R&D intensive corporates and universities. Prior to Iris.ai Maria worked as a researcher at Demos Helsinki and the Bank of Finland publishing joint research papers e.g. in MIT Press Journal and Futures. She has also worked at UNICEF HQ and co-founded Peloton Club, the Nordic community for startups working on smart energy solutions. In addition to Iris.ai, Maria serves as a board member at Vake Oy.
Jacobo Elosua
CFO
Jacobo is responsible for running the business operations and financial management of Iris.ai. Jacobo holds a triple degree in Economics, Business and Law. Before co-founding Iris.ai, he was the owner of Ezaro Media and co-founder of i.ngen.io. He also served nearly 10 years at UBS Investment Bank as Executive Director specializing in Media and Technology M&A and financing. He was also co-founder and Chairman of Civio, a non-for-profit fostering an active and engaged citizenship through transparency, technology and journalism.
For open, transparent and fair science. Together.
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