PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alex Smola

Also known as Alexander J. Smola, A. J. Smola, A. Smola, A.J. Smola, Alexander Johannes Smola

Alex Smola is a machine-learning researcher whose career spans kernel methods, deep learning, and AI systems. He studied physics in Munich and earned a computer-science PhD at TU Berlin in 1998. His career moved from Berlin and Australia through Yahoo, Google, Carnegie Mellon, and AWS. He coauthored Learning with Kernels and Dive into Deep Learning. Since 2023, he is Boson AI's CEO and CSO; he gave participants technical guidance at the company's Bay Area Higgs Audio Hackathon in March 2026.

Now at
Boson AI
Works
439
Citations
126,004
h-index
80
Rankings
#44 by citations
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1998–1999

    Physics and a doctorate

    Before his doctorate, he studies physics in Munich. He earns a computer-science PhD at TU Berlin in 1998 and works as a researcher at Berlin's GMD Institute through 1999.

  2. 1999–2008

    Research at ANU and NICTA

    At ANU, he works as a researcher and group leader. He coauthors Learning with Kernels in 2002, a book on support-vector machines and related kernel methods. From 2004, he leads NICTA's Statistical Machine Learning Program.

  3. 2008–2014

    Yahoo and Google research

    At Yahoo! Research, he works from 2008 to 2012. In 2012, he moves to Google Research and continues through 2014.

  4. 2013–2017

    Professor at Carnegie Mellon

    He joins Carnegie Mellon's Machine Learning Department in January 2013 as a professor and co-founds Marianas Labs in early 2015. Across ANU/NICTA, Yahoo!, CMU, and Amazon, he supervises about 75 PhD students, postdocs, and research scientists.

  5. August 2016

    Machine learning at AWS

    He joins AWS in August 2016 as Director of Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

  6. 2016–2021

    Conferences, teaching and deep learning

    He serves as program chair for KDD in 2016. At UC Berkeley, he teaches Introduction to Deep Learning in 2019 and serves as general chair for MLSys in 2020. In 2021, he coauthors Dive into Deep Learning, an open-source interactive book.

  7. Since 2023

    Leading Boson AI

    He co-founds Boson AI in 2023 and serves as its CEO and CSO. The company builds Higgs, its multimodal models for voice and audio.

  8. March 2026

    CEO at the Higgs Audio hackathon

    In March 2026, he serves as Boson AI's CEO and CSO and gives participants technical guidance at its Bay Area Higgs Audio Hackathon.

A language model matched the links in this timeline to people, organizations and papers (provisional, model-judged).

Career

  1. Since 2023Boson AICo-founder, CEO and CSO
  2. 2019University of California, Berkeley
  3. 2016–2023AmazonDirector of Machine Learning and Deep Learning
  4. From 2015Marianas LabsCo-founder
  5. 2013–2017Carnegie Mellon UniversityProfessor
  6. 2012–2014Google Research
  7. 2012–2017Google
  8. 2008–2012Yahoo
  9. 2005–2008Max Planck Society
  10. 2004–2008National ICT AustraliaLeader, Statistical Machine Learning Program
  11. 2003–2008CSIRO
  12. 2000–2008Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
  13. 1999–2008Australian National UniversityResearcher and group leader
  14. 1998–1999German National Research Center for Information TechnologyResearcher

Education

  1. 1998Technische Universität BerlinPhD

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

Most-cited works

  1. A tutorial on support vector regression2004 · Statistics and Computing · 13,401 citationsWith Bernhard Schölkopf
  2. Learning with Kernels2001 · The MIT Press eBooks · 11,766 citationsWith Bernhard Schölkopf
  3. Nonlinear Component Analysis as a Kernel Eigenvalue Problem1998 · Neural Computation · 8,088 citationsWith Bernhard Schölkopf and Klaus-Robert Müller
  4. Estimating the Support of a High-Dimensional Distribution2001 · Neural Computation · 6,127 citationsWith Bernhard Schölkopf, Bob Williamson and John Shawe-Taylor
  5. Hierarchical Attention Networks for Document Classification2016 · Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT) · 4,868 citationsWith Eduard H. Hovy

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. More top papers now list two or more of the people shaping AI: 39% in 2020–2024, up from 18%Includes Alex Smola. We find that 39% of top papers from 2020–2024 list two or more of the people shaping AI, up from 18% in 1970–1974.
  2. 14% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Alex Smola. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after their doctorate, and how the timing changed across cohorts.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  4. Google alumni founded or led 79 other organizations, the most among the labs we compareIncludes Google. We trace 181 organizations founded or led by AI lab alumni, and 187 career moves between the labs.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. Alex Smola alex.smola.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. Alex Smola Joins the Machine Learning Department ml.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. Learning with Kernels: Support Vector Machines, Regularization, Optimization, and Beyond books.google.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. Curriculum Vitae – Alex Smola alex.smola.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. In the Research Spotlight: Alex Smola aws.amazon.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Teaching – Alex Smola alex.smola.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. [2106.11342] Dive into Deep Learning arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. About – Boson AI boson.ai. Checked 18 October 2026.
  9. Team – Boson AI boson.ai. Checked 18 October 2026.
  10. The Higgs Audio Hackathon heads to California - Bay Area 2026 boson.ai. Checked 18 October 2026.