Astro Teller

Infobox Person
name = Astro Teller

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|thumb|Astro Teller
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birth_date = May 29, 1970
birth_place = Cambridge, England
residence = San Francisco, CA
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occupation = Entrepreneur, Scientist, Author
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website = http://astroteller.net/
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ASTRO TELLER

Dr. Astro Teller (born May 29, 1970) is an entrepreneur, scientist and author, with expertise in the field of intelligent technology. Teller has created and grown five companies and holds numerous U.S. patents related to his work in hardware and software technology.

BIOGRAPHY

Career

Teller is co-founder and CEO of Cerebellum Capital (http://www.cerebellumcapital.com), a hedge fund management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning.

Astro is also co-founder and Chairman of BodyMedia, Inc. (http://www.bodymedia.com), a leading wearable body monitoring company. From 1999 to 2007, Dr. Teller was also Chief Executive Officer of BodyMedia, Inc.

Prior to starting BodyMedia in 1999, Dr. Teller was co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Sandbox Advanced Development (http://astroteller.net/SandboxWebsite/index.html), an advanced development technology company.

He also works closely with Juliette Powell on The Gathering Think Tank (http://www.thegatheringwebsite.com), which provides a forum for innovation, research and development.

Before his tenure as a business executive, Dr. Teller taught at Stanford University and was an engineer and researcher for Phoenix Laser Technologies, Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems, and The Carnegie Group Incorporated.

Education

Dr. Teller holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University, Masters of Science in symbolic computation (symbolic and heuristic computation), also from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Hertz fellowship. [The Hertz Foundation provides financial and fellowship support to remarkable PhD students in the physical, biological and engineering sciences. http://www.hertzfoundation.org/]

Personal

Astro Teller was born on May 29, 1970 in Cambridge, England. His upbringing took place in Cambridge as well as Evanston, Illinois and Berkeley, California. His mother, Chantal, is French and the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning economist Gerard Debreu. His father, Paul, is Hungarian and the son of physicist Edward Teller.

WRITINGS & ART

Literature

Teller has written three fiction works, Among these Savage Thoughts, Exegesis, and Golem. The contents of the latter were sold to Paramount Pictures and are therefore confidential.

Among These Savage Thoughts [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615180035] is a fable of internal struggle and personal rediscovery. The book centers around Lane, a young man in his last year as an apprentice assassin in the ancient town of Karabas. In coming to grips with his unpardonable sins of leniency, he loses himself and must struggle to achieve redemption and reinvention.

In Exegesis [http://www.amazon.com/dp/037570051X] , Teller deals with the issues of emerging machine intelligence without the usual simplifications and moral generalizations. It's the story of an artificial intelligence researcher and her creation, a program named Edgar, who develops self-awareness and must come to terms with its own existence. Through their e-mail--their only means of interaction--we watch them deal with the ramifications of Edgar's development, which includes the government's desire to capture Edgar and our cultural fear of Frankenstein's monster.

Art

Jedermann is a project by Astro Teller and Christopher Pacione that fuses aspects of art and computer science into an interactive experience. Facial characteristics and personal information are taken from participants and are transformed into living digital portraits. Images from the exhibition can be seen at : http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/astro/mosaic/JEDERMANN/Jeder2.html

TECHNICAL PAPERS & PATENTS

* A list of Astro Teller's technical papers can be found here: http://astroteller.net/work/papers.html

* A list of Astro Teller's patents can be found here: http://www.astroteller.net/work/patents.html

EXTERNAL LINKS

* Lectures: http://astroteller.net/work/lectures.html

* Op-Eds: http://astroteller.net/writings/oped.html

REFERENCES

* Personal Website - http://www.astroteller.net

* Forbes Article: "Future Teller" - http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2005/0606/071.html

* "Exegesis Book Website" - http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/exegesis/