Applied Intelligence Awards 2023: Here Are the Nominees

The shortlist for this year’s Applied Intelligence Awards is here. The awards showcase the best and brightest in AI.

Voting is now open until 19 September and the winner will be revealed at Applied Intelligence Live! Austin (formerly AI Summit Austin). Note that voting multiple times will not increase the chance of success.

Technology Leader of the Year

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Shobhit Varshney, Vice President and Senior Partner, Americas at IBM

Shobhit Varshney is a senior partner and vice president in IBM Consulting, leading the AI, generative AI and IoT Edge business across the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

Under his leadership, IBM’s AI IoT practice has more than doubled and is recognized as a leader across IDC, Forrester and HfS. He has helped grow one of the most diverse and inclusive AI teams in the industry and has made significant contributions to the field of Ethical AI. To help enterprises accelerate their competitive advantage with trustworthy Generative AI, he established and co-leads IBM's Generative AI Center of Excellence of 1,000+ SMEs.

Eugenio Zuccarelli, Data Science Manager at CVS Health

Eugenio Zuccarelli is an AI Leader working at CVS Health, a Fortune 500 company. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30, TEDx Speaker, WEF Global Shaper, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient and has studied at MIT, Harvard and Imperial College.

His analyses helped develop policy recommendations for The White House, CEOs and leading research institutions to take action in key situations, such as the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Eugenio is the recipient of 15+ honors and awards, including the John McCarthy Award for contributions to AI, Nova Talent of the Year, and the ISPI / BCG Future Leaders Award.

Mike Pappas, CEO and Co-Founder of Modulate

As CEO and co-founder, Mike Pappas has grown Modulate from two employees to almost 40 in under three years. He was instrumental in conceptualizing and developing ToxMod, Modulate’s purpose-built AI-enhanced platform that proactively detects and flags toxic behavior in video game voice chats and has helped shepherd a key partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to uncover the prevalence and impact of toxicity in games.

Mike’s thoughtful and strategic approach to leadership is reflected in Modulate’s commitment to transparency, individual growth, and team member autonomy. The company culture is a direct result of his ethos and passion for building a collaborative and efficient team whose operating principles are rooted in empathy and a desire to learn.

Alex Challans, CEO of Resonance

Resonance is a provider of market intelligence and media across the deep tech industry. The company owns and manages The Quantum Insider, Metaverse Insider and Space Impulse. It caters to a suite of blue-chip clients, including national governments, tech giants and international investors.

Alex has led the team in its advanced integration of the latest AI technology to accelerate data gathering, structuring and presentation of market intelligence. Resonance is backed by a coterie of top-tier global investors and is on a mission to build the tech intelligence engine of the future. By facilitating informed decision-making and fostering collaboration, Resonance is driving progress and shaping the future of technology across the globe.

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2022 Winner: Dev Singh, Senior Director, Business Development and Head of Autonomous Robotics, Drones and Intelligent Machines, Qualcomm Technologies

Dev Singh is responsible for leading and managing the robotics and intelligent machines within Qualcomm Technologies’ IoT business unit.

As robotics, drone, and intelligent machine lead, Dev has overseen countless launches of world-changing, next-generation technology, including the Qualcomm Flight Platform, which powered the Mars Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter on the first-ever Mars flight.

While the platform was not originally developed for space travel, it had the high power and unique features that NASA/JPL required, including powerful autonomous operation features, making it the best choice to tackle the challenges of this historic flight.

AI / IoT Application of the Year

The AI/IoT Application of the Year award recognizes an outstanding project that has fueled business growth and change.

Preference will be given to projects that demonstrate the combined synergies of the two technologies, but we’re also interested in hearing about standalone technology applications.

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Hawktivity

Hawktivity's Customer Service Sensors use computer vision and AI to turn regular CCTV cameras into IoT sensors that detect human actions. The Customer Service Sensor, used in restaurants, monitors how long customers queue and wait to be served, in real time.

These are the two most important customer service metrics. The sensors enable the store to measure their customer service for continuous improvement, which direct leads to an increase in sales and customer loyalty.

Steve AI

Steve AI, with its patented AI text-to-video (animation and live-action) technology, eliminates the need for extensive manual editing so content creators can now focus on their core ideas and storytelling. Steve AI handles the rest, transforming words into visually captivating stories.

What sets Steve AI apart is its ability to deliver outstanding results for real-world scenarios. Whether it's for marketing campaigns, educational content, or social media promotions, Steve AI offers a versatile range of options democratizing video creation and making it accessible to individuals and businesses of all sizes. With a top-notch research team and innovative product roadmap, Steve AI has received several awards and garnered recognition for its ability to reduce the video-creation time to just minutes - without breaking the bank.

Lightelligence

Lightelligence, an MIT spinout, is developing next-generation compute hardware, making novel use of the silicon fabrication platform used for traditional semiconductor chips. Rather than building chips that use electricity to carry out computations, Lightelligence develops components powered by light to enable higher speeds, lower latency and lower power consumption.

Its products and solutions are based on silicon photonics technology that enables faster and more energy-efficient computing than traditional semiconductor architectures. By harnessing the fundamental properties of light to accelerate computing, systems can be made that overcome the limitations of Moore's Law for continued performance scaling for decades to come.

SkyHive

SkyHive's generative AI capabilities create ultra-relevant and contextual career paths for individuals and companies, allowing for more effective career planning and talent management strategies. It helps individuals and organizations identify the skills they need to succeed and develop a plan to achieve their career goals.

Organizations are moving to a skills-based approach to managing the entire employee lifecycle, making hiring and talent management more reliant on skills than on credentials, pedigree, or people’s networks. Generative AI provides the foundation for this skills-based approach, allowing organizations to remove bias and develop a talent architecture, make compensation plans, and provide internal mobility to employees based on the changing needs of the real-time labor market.

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2022 Winner: Samsara's Connected Operations Cloud for Drivers

Distracted driving kills thousands of people in the U.S. annually. Through the use of IoT sensors, AI-enabled cameras and a cloud platform, Samsara helps organizations prevent these incidents at scale. AI is used to detect behaviors such as phone usage, tailgating, and distracted driving and trigger in-cab alerts to correct and coach driver behavior in real-time, helping to prevent incidents before they occur.

In a recent customer analysis, users of Samsara video-based safety and telematics solutions saw a 63% decrease in crashes within the first 12 months.

Positive Impact Award

The Positive Impact Award recognizes organizations and individuals within the tech sector that are driving initiatives to positively impact business, society and the environment. The winner will exemplify through its actions a commitment to a greener, fairer and more sustainable future.

This award will be selected by a panel of expert judges.

ClosedLoop

ClosedLoop helps health care organizations build AI/ML models to make accurate, explainable and actionable predictions of individual-level health risks. Identifying those at the highest risk of costly events means targeting proactive interventions to those in need, mitigating negative outcomes.

In 2022, ClosedLoop generated 808 million predictions about individuals – or 26 predictions per second. Organizations can use these insights to intervene before the onset of congestive heart failure, unplanned dialysis, mortality, readmissions and other conditions and risks.

With trust a hurdle in AI adoption, ClosedLoop addresses this issue by enabling users to evaluate algorithms for bias and fairness, then retrain models easily. The company’s dedication to AI explainability won the CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge. Purpose-built for health care, ClosedLoop is Best in KLAS: Health care AI in 2022 and 2023.

Modulate

Modulate is building voice technology that elevates the health and safety of online communities. Our mission is to combat online toxicity by making video game voice chats safer and more inclusive for all. ToxMod is Modulate’s intelligent anti-toxicity platform that proactively detects and flags toxic or harmful speech in video game voice chats.

In the past year, ToxMod has helped game studios to take over four million actions against problematic players, helping to create a safer and more inclusive environment for all. Its mission is to make social video games more accessible and welcoming, from targeted recruiting and hiring practices aimed at increasing representation of historically underrepresented technology workers to offering regular career growth chats and workshops for team members. Modulate is focused on building a positive, welcoming culture and supporting employees’ growth and development.

SkyHive

SkyHive's generative AI capabilities create ultra-relevant and contextual career paths for individuals and companies, allowing for more effective career planning and talent management strategies. It helps individuals and organizations identify the skills they need to succeed and develop a plan to achieve their career goals.

Organizations are moving to a skills-based approach to managing the entire employee lifecycle, making hiring and talent management more reliant on skills than on credentials, pedigree or people’s networks. Generative AI provides the foundation for this skills-based approach, allowing organizations to remove bias and develop a talent architecture, make compensation plans, and provide internal mobility to employees based on the changing needs of the real-time labor market.

Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments has made significant Corporate Citizenship commitments in the areas of ESG and sustainability, and it is utilizing available data to ensure it meets them.

As a semiconductor company that manufactures billions of chips a year, the company introduced efficiencies in its fabrication process that resulted in a 3.2% reduction in water use in 2022, compared to 2021.

To conserve water, Texas Instruments has done such things as optimizing the efficiency of deionized water plants by improving the recovery rates of reverse-osmosis filters. It also reduces manufacturing tool water use by optimizing flow rates and identifying where to reuse water in other processes; it maximizes the amount of condensate and microfiltration water directed to cooling towers, among other activities.

The company also ensures that 90% of solid waste materials are diverted from landfills.

2022 Winner: Dell Technologies (award accepted by Nick Abbatiello, Senior Distinguished Engineer)

The judges were particularly impressed with the following:

-The millions of pounds of sustainable, recycled and renewable materials used by Dell in products and packaging, with a particular focus on last year’s launch of PCs containing tree-based bioplastic upcycled from the paper-making industry and ocean-bound plastic

-A strong commitment by Dell that by 2030, it will reuse or recycle an equivalent product for every product purchased - and that 100% of packaging as well as more than half of product content will be made from recycled or renewable materials

-Its work in communities globally to increase digital inclusion through access to technology, skills and collaborative networks that foster digital transformation and tech-enabled innovation