Kommy Weldemariam

Chief Scientist and Master Inventor, IBM Research, Africa

He is responsible for the scientific and technical directions and execution of research and development projects. He also leads the execution of hiring top-notch scientists and engineers while fostering an innovation ecosystem. As a research scientist, Dr. Weldemariam worked on various areas and industries with responsibilities spanning research, development, and technology transfer on Data, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things, and at-scale Software Systems.  Prior to IBM, Dr. Weldemariam was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at School of Computing, Queen’s University (Canada), a tenure track Research Scientist at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento (Italy), contractual Professor at the University of Trento (Italy), and visiting researcher in the Security Lab at the UC, Santa Barbara CA (USA).  He has co-written more than 60 scientific articles, has over 100 patents and applications to his name, and was named an IBM Master Inventor, the company’s first in Africa.  He is a recipient of several awards including the NEF’16 award, and Outstanding Service Award and Outstanding Technical Achievement awards from IBM.   Dr. Weldemariam holds a BSc, MSc, and Ph.D., all in Computer Science from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), India Institute of Technology at Bombay (India), and Trento University (Italy).