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Michael Barborak

Also known as Mike Barborak, Michael A. Barborak

Michael Barborak is a software engineer whose AI work spans IBM Watson question answering and Elemental Cognition's reasoning systems. He earned a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, founded a digital agency and a software development company before IBM, and joined the Watson research team. At IBM, he developed WatsonPaths and shared the 2013 AAAI Feigenbaum Prize; he later coauthored papers on COVID-19 action languages and Clingo's incremental reasoning and was named as an inventor on Elemental Cognition's language-understanding patent. In August 2023, David Ferrucci raised nearly $60 million for Elemental Cognition, which he founded in 2015; Barborak and Eric Brown were vice presidents on its leadership team, and both had IBM on their résumés. In June 2024, he wrote about EC's Apache Kafka pipeline and the system's use of large language models; as of October 2026, he is vice president of engineering at Elemental Cognition with more than 30 years of software development experience.

Works
6
Citations
502
h-index
3
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 2013

    Education and software ventures

    He earns a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Before IBM, he founds and runs a digital agency and a software development company; by 2013, he is part of IBM's Watson research team at the T.J. Watson Research Center.

  2. 2013

    The Feigenbaum Prize

    In 2013, the AAAI awards the Feigenbaum Prize to IBM's Watson team, including Barborak, for showing that a synthesis of AI techniques can achieve human-level performance in real-time factual question-answering.

  3. 2016–2020

    Language-understanding patent

    In 2016, Elemental Cognition files a patent application for an architecture that lets computers learn to understand natural-language text through dialogue with people, naming him as an inventor with David Ferrucci, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, Aditya Kalyanpur and Adam Lally. The US10606952B2 patent issues in March 2020.

  4. 2017

    WatsonPaths for medical reasoning

    At IBM, he develops WatsonPaths, a scenario-based system that breaks patient cases into pieces, asks Watson subquestions and uses probabilistic inference over a graph to find likely diagnoses or treatments. In 2017, he coauthors its AI Magazine description with Adam Lally, David Ferrucci and colleagues.

  5. 2020

    Action languages and COVID-19

    In 2020, he coauthors “Action Languages and COVID-19: Lessons Learned” with Marcello Balduccini and David Ferrucci for the Workshop on Causal Reasoning and Explanation in Logic Programming, part of the International Conference on Logic Programming 2020 workshops.

  6. March 2023

    Clingo's incremental algorithms

    In March 2023, he coauthors “Pushing the Limits of Clingo's Incremental Grounding and Solving Capabilities in Practical Applications” with Marcello Balduccini and David Ferrucci.

  7. August 2023

    Elemental Cognition funding

    In August 2023, David Ferrucci raises nearly $60 million for Elemental Cognition, which he founds in 2015.

  8. As of October 2026

    Vice president of engineering

    By August 2023, he and Eric Brown are vice presidents on Elemental Cognition's leadership team, and both have IBM on their résumés. In June 2024, as the company's vice president of engineering, he writes about using Apache Kafka to stream and vet customer data before it reaches the EC Reasoning Engine; LLMs help users write application specifications and communicate with end users, while the Reasoning Engine generates the answer. He has more than 30 years of professional software development experience and, as of October 2026, is vice president of engineering at Elemental Cognition.

Career

  1. From 2023Elemental CognitionVice President, Vice President of Engineering

Education

  1. University of Texas at AustinMaster's degree

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

Most-cited works

  1. The consensus problem in fault-tolerant computing1993 · ACM Computing Surveys · 400 citations
  2. WatsonPaths: Scenario‐Based Question Answering and Inference over Unstructured Information2017 · AI Magazine · 87 citationsWith Adam Lally, Aditya Kalyanpur, David Ferrucci and Erik Mueller
  3. Partitioning for efficient consensus2002 · Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · 14 citations
  4. UNICON - A Universal Consensus for Responsive Computer Systems1992 · 1 citations
  5. Action Languages and COVID-19: Lessons Learned2020 · International Conference on Logic Programming · 0 citationsWith David Ferrucci

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Elemental Cognition. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  2. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of Texas at Austin. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  3. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes IBM. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  4. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes IBM. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Mike Barborak, Author at The New Stack thenewstack.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. AAAI Feigenbaum Prize - AAAI aaai.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. US10606952B2 - Architecture and processes for computer learning and understanding - Google Patents patents.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. WatsonPaths: Scenario-Based Question Answering and Inference over Unstructured Information | AI Magazine aaai.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Watsonpaths: Scenario-based question answering and inference over unstructured information for AI Magazine - IBM Research research.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. CEUR-WS.org/Vol-2678 - International Conference on Logic Programming 2020 Workshops ceur-ws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Michael Barborak csauthors.net. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. The scientist behind IBM Watson has raised $60 million for his AI startup in New York cnbc.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. 5 Best Practices for Building Reliable GenAI Apps - The New Stack thenewstack.io. Checked 21 October 2026.