Hartmut Neven

A visionary in quantum computing and machine learning, Hartmut Neven leads Google Quantum AI, a lab with the most advanced scientific achievements in quantum computing to date. A dedicated explorer of the frontiers of computing and neuroscience, he leads the company in its aim to build a large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer to solve problems that are intractable with today's processors.

Previously, Neven was head of the Visual Search team at Google. His team developed the visual search service which is used by a large number of Google products including Image Search, Google Photos, YouTube, Street View and Google Goggles. His teams won a number of competitions designed to establish the best visual recognition software for faces (FERET 1996, FRVT 2002), objects (ImageNet 2014) and text (ICDAR 2013). He was also a co-founder of Project Glass, building its first prototype. Prior to joining Google, Neven started two computer vision companies, the second of which was acquired by Google. He was also a research professor for Computer Science and Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of Southern California (USC), and the head of the Laboratory for Human-Machine Interfaces at USC's Information Sciences Institute.

Fast Company has recognized Neven as one of the world's most creative individuals. He is a member of Tiny Blue Dot Foundation’s advisory board.

Neven studied Physics and Economics in Brazil, Cologne, Paris, Tübingen and Jerusalem. He wrote his master's thesis on a neuronal model of object recognition at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. He received his PhD from the Institute for Neuroinformatics at Germany’s Ruhr University.