PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alex Aiken

Alex Aiken is a Stanford computer scientist whose work spans program analysis, software verification, and GPU computing for transformer attention. He earned a degree in computer science and music at Bowling Green State University and a PhD from Cornell, worked at IBM Almaden and UC Berkeley, and joined Stanford in 2003. He developed MOSS, a code-similarity system made available to professors by 1998, and received the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award for work on constraint-based analysis, bug localization, synthesis, and parallel systems. In 2025, he coauthored Cypress, a task-based GPU programming model for tensor computations and transformer attention kernels; as of October 2026, he is an Alcatel-Lucent professor at Stanford in computer science, particle physics and astrophysics, and photon science.

Works
509
Citations
21,573
h-index
79
Badges
Links
Website and Google Scholar

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1983–1988

    From Bowling Green to Cornell

    He earns a bachelor's degree in computer science and music at Bowling Green State University in 1983 and a PhD from Cornell University in 1988.

  2. 1988–2003

    IBM and Berkeley

    He works as a research staff member at IBM Almaden Research Center from 1988 to 1993. At UC Berkeley, he is a professor in the EECS department from 1993 to 2003.

  3. By 1998

    Moss on the web

    By 1998, he makes MOSS available to computer science professors around the world after three years of testing. The software finds similar or identical lines of code in programming assignments.

  4. 2003

    Joining Stanford

    He joins Stanford's faculty in 2003, where his research focuses on programming languages.

  5. September 2014

    Chair of Stanford CS

    In September 2014, he becomes chair of Stanford's Computer Science Department. His research focuses on programming languages and software verification.

  6. 2019

    A programming languages award

    In 2019, he receives ACM SIGPLAN's Programming Languages Achievement Award for work on constraint-based program analysis, statistical bug localization, program synthesis, and parallel programming systems.

  7. 2025

    Cypress on modern GPUs

    In 2025, he coauthors Task-Based Tensor Computations on Modern GPUs. The paper introduces Cypress, a task-based programming model, and evaluates attention kernels widely used in transformer models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Computer science professor

    As of October 2026, he is Stanford's Alcatel-Lucent Professor of Computer Science, with academic appointments in particle physics and astrophysics and photon science.

Career

  1. Since 2003Stanford UniversityAlcatel-Lucent Professor of Computer Science, Chair
  2. 1994–1995Cornell University
  3. 1993–2003University of California, BerkeleyProfessor
  4. 1990–1995IBM Research - Thomas J. Watson Research Center
  5. 1988–1993IBM ResearchResearch staff member

Education

  1. 1988Cornell UniversityPhD
  2. 1983Bowling Green State UniversityBachelor's degree

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Stanford University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Stanford University. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Stanford University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Stanford University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Alex Aiken yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Alex Aiken's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. 01.21.98 - Honesty's the Best Bet in Computer Classes | Berkeley News Archive newsarchive.berkeley.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Alex Aiken named chair of Computer Science | Stanford University School of Engineering engineering.stanford.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Programming Languages Achievement Award sigplan.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Task-Based Tensor Computations on Modern GPUs arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.