Sebastian Thrun
AI & Robotics Pioneer | Founder of Google X, Waymo, Udacity & Dulo | Godfather of the Self-Driving Car | Former Director, Stanford AI Lab
Anima Anandkumar
Bren Professor of Computing at Caltech | Former Senior Director of AI Research, NVIDIA | Inventor of Neural Operators & 2026 TIME100 in AI
Anima Anandkumar is one of the world's most influential AI scientists, a Caltech professor whose breakthroughs are transforming how science itself is done. The inventor of neural operators, the AI behind the first high-speed AI weather model, she previously led AI research at NVIDIA and was a principal scientist at AWS. Named to the 2026 TIME100 in AI, she gives audiences a rare view of how AI is reshaping discovery and the physical world.
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Anima Anandkumar biography
AI speaker Anima Anandkumar is one of the most influential artificial intelligence scientists in the world, and a pioneer of a new frontier: AI that doesn’t just process language, but understands and simulates the physical world. The Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech, where she leads the AI + Science Lab, she was the youngest person ever appointed to a named chair at the institution, and her breakthroughs are transforming how science itself is done.
Anandkumar’s career bridges the very top of academia and industry. She served as Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA and as a Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services, and in 2025 she co-founded Accelerated Understanding, an AI company building large-scale models that can simulate and understand physics, after famously walking away from an offer to join a Jeff Bezos-backed venture to pursue her own vision. She holds a PhD from Cornell and a B.Tech from IIT Madras, and is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAI, a Guggenheim and Sloan Fellow, and a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Inventing AI for Science
Anandkumar is best known for inventing “neural operators,” a groundbreaking AI framework that learns the underlying mathematics of physical systems, allowing machines to model phenomena like fluid dynamics, climate, and materials across vastly different scales. She used them to help build FourCastNet, the first AI-based high-resolution weather model, which runs tens of thousands of times faster than traditional forecasting and is now used by premier weather agencies. Her methods have also accelerated nuclear-fusion modeling, drug and medical-device design, and chip manufacturing. Named to the 2026 TIME100 in AI and a recipient of the TIME100 Impact Award, she is one of the defining scientists of the AI era.
As a speaker, Anima Anandkumar makes the frontier of AI vivid, credible, and genuinely exciting, translating her own breakthroughs into insight any audience can grasp. She speaks on where AI is really heading, AI for science and discovery, how AI is transforming industry and the physical world, and building a more diverse and responsible future for the field. Audiences gain a rare, authoritative view of AI from one of the people actively inventing what comes next.
Anima Anandkumar Speaking Videos
Keynote | Anima Anandkumar - Global AI Summit 2022
AI That Connects the Digital and Physical Worlds | Anima Anandkumar | TED
Anima Anandkumar Keynote Topics
Few people can speak about the future of AI with the authority of Anima Anandkumar, who has helped invent it from inside academia, NVIDIA, and AWS. In this keynote she cuts through the hype to explain what today’s AI can and cannot do, where the real breakthroughs are happening, and how the technology will reshape business, work, and society in the years ahead. Clear, credible, and genuinely exciting, it’s an essential briefing for any leader trying to separate signal from noise in the age of AI.
Anima Anandkumar invented the neural operators that let AI model the physical world, and used them to build the first AI weather model, running tens of thousands of times faster than anything before it. In this fascinating keynote she reveals how AI is transforming the scientific method itself, accelerating discovery across weather and climate, medicine, clean energy, and engineering. A visionary, inspiring look at one of the most consequential frontiers of AI, from the scientist leading the way.
Most of the AI conversation centers on chatbots and language, but Anima Anandkumar is betting the next great leap will come from teaching machines to understand physics. In this forward-looking keynote she explains why models that grasp the physical world, how fluids flow, materials behave, and systems evolve, could unlock advances that language models never will, from faster drug discovery to new engineering and climate solutions. A rare, frontier perspective from one of AI’s most original minds.
AI will shape the future of humanity, so who builds it matters enormously. Drawing on her own journey as a woman and immigrant at the top of the field, and her high-profile advocacy for inclusion in AI, Anima Anandkumar makes a compelling case for why diversity is essential to building AI that is responsible, trustworthy, and good for everyone. She offers leaders practical perspective on empowering women in technology and creating teams and cultures where the best ideas, from everyone, can thrive.
Speaker topics
FAQs on Booking Anima Anandkumar
Why Anima Anandkumar?
Booking Anima Anandkumar brings audiences one of the world’s foremost AI scientists, a genuine inventor at the frontier rather than a commentator on it. The Bren Professor at Caltech and former Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA, she pioneered the neural operators now accelerating science and built the first AI weather model, and she was named to the 2026 TIME100 in AI. She makes the cutting edge of AI vivid, credible, and exciting, cutting through hype to show leaders where the technology is truly heading. She also brings a powerful perspective on diversity and responsibility in AI. She is ideal for events on AI, technology, science, innovation, and the future. To bring Anima Anandkumar to your next event, contact Aurum Speakers Bureau.
Who is Anima Anandkumar?
Anima Anandkumar is an Indian-American computer scientist and one of the most influential researchers in artificial intelligence. She is the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech, where she leads the AI + Science Lab and was the youngest person ever appointed to a named chair. She previously served as Senior Director of AI Research at NVIDIA and as a Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services, and in 2025 she co-founded Accelerated Understanding, an AI company focused on modeling the physical world. She invented “neural operators,” a framework that lets AI simulate physical systems, and used them to help build FourCastNet, the first AI-based high-resolution weather model. A Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAI, a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board, and a recipient of the TIME100 Impact Award, she was named to the 2026 TIME100 in AI.
What are neural operators, and why do they matter?
Neural operators are a groundbreaking type of AI that Anima Anandkumar introduced in 2020, and they represent one of the most important ideas in applying AI to the physical world. Most AI systems learn from discrete data points, individual words, pixels, or numbers. Neural operators instead learn continuous mathematical functions, the underlying equations that describe how physical systems behave. This lets them model complex natural phenomena, such as how fluids flow, how weather evolves, or how materials respond to stress, across many different scales, and to do so with extraordinary speed and accuracy. The most striking example is FourCastNet, the first AI-based high-resolution weather model, which Anandkumar helped build using neural operators: it runs tens of thousands of times faster than traditional physics-based forecasting, cheaply enough to run on a single gaming GPU, and is now used at premier weather agencies. The same approach has accelerated work in nuclear-fusion modeling, drug and enzyme design, medical-device engineering, and chip manufacturing. For Anandkumar, neural operators are central to a bigger bet: that the next great leap in AI will come not from language, but from teaching machines to truly understand physics, unlocking scientific discovery and engineering breakthroughs that were previously out of reach.
What topics does AI speaker Anima Anandkumar cover?
Anima Anandkumar speaks on the future of AI and technology, AI for science and discovery, AI that understands the physical world (beyond language), and diversity and responsibility in AI. Her keynotes suit events on AI, technology, science, innovation, and the future, for corporate, technical, and general audiences. To book Anima Anandkumar as a speaker, contact Aurum Speakers Bureau.
How to book Anima Anandkumar as a keynote speaker?
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How much is Anima Anandkumar speaking fee?
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Can I book Anima Anandkumar for a virtual keynote?
Yes, Anima Anandkumar is available for virtual keynotes and webinars. To book Anima Anandkumar for a virtual event, please complete the contact form or send us an email to inquire about the special fees for virtual engagements.
