PeopleofSuperintelligence

Builder

Paco Nathan

Also known as pacoid

Paco Nathan is a computer scientist whose work has moved from early web chatbots to big data tools and, more recently, knowledge graphs for AI. After studying at Stanford, he built the Barry DeFacto chatterbot in 1995 with Robby Garner and Luigi Caputo. In 2013, as director of data science at Concurrent, he wrote a book on enterprise data workflows with Cascading, and in 2014 he was an Apache Spark evangelist at Databricks. Innovation Enterprise cited him in 2015 as one of the Top 30 People in Big Data and Analytics, and his Derwen libraries include PyTextRank (2016) and kglab (2020). He is Principal DevRel Engineer at Senzing, where he leads developer relations for entity-resolved knowledge graphs and hosts the Graph Power Hour.

Now at
Senzing
Born
1962
Works
13
Citations
20
h-index
3
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1984–1986

    Stanford and the CS1E course

    He earns a BS in mathematical sciences and an MS in computer science at Stanford. From 1984 to 1986, a teaching fellowship under Stuart Reges lets him create CS1E, a peer-taught introduction to using the Internet that grows into Stanford's Residential Computing program.

  2. 1995

    The Barry DeFacto chatterbot

    In 1995, he works with Robby Garner and Luigi Caputo on Barry DeFacto, one of the first web chatterbots. The three go on to build JFRED, an open source Java chatbot project, which reaches a 17% Turing percentage in BBC Television's Tomorrow's World MegaLab Experiment, then the largest online Turing test.

  3. 2013–2014

    Cascading, then Apache Spark

    In 2013, he is director of data science at Concurrent, the company behind Cascading, where he leads developer outreach and publishes a book on enterprise data workflows with Cascading. In 2014, he is an Apache Spark open source evangelist at Databricks and keynotes Big Data Everywhere on how Spark fits into the big data landscape.

  4. 2015

    Top 30 in big data

    Innovation Enterprise cites him in 2015 as one of the Top 30 People in Big Data and Analytics.

  5. 2016–2020

    PyTextRank, kglab and Derwen

    He publishes the PyTextRank library in 2016, a Python implementation of TextRank for phrase extraction and summarization of text documents. By 2019, he is founder of Derwen.ai, after serving as director of the Learning Group at O'Reilly Media, where he also built knowledge graphs. In 2020, he publishes kglab, a Python abstraction layer for building knowledge graphs.

  6. 2019–2020

    A Rich Context knowledge graph

    He advises the Rich Context project at the Coleridge Initiative at NYU Wagner, a knowledge graph built from metadata about how curated datasets are used in research. In October 2019, he presents it at a computer science seminar at the University of Manchester, and in March 2020 he presents it at an Ontolog Forum session.

  7. 2024

    Knowledge graphs at Senzing

    By October 2024, he is building out the knowledge graph practice at Senzing, whose focus is entity resolution. Senzing announces him as Principal Developer Relations Engineer, citing his experience with machine learning, natural language and graph technologies.

  8. As of October 2026

    Principal DevRel engineer at Senzing

    He is Principal DevRel Engineer at Senzing, leading developer relations for its entity-resolved knowledge graph practice. He hosts the monthly Graph Power Hour webinar, with episodes listed through August 2026, and in August 2025 he joins Enterprise Knowledge's Knowledge Cast to discuss graph trends and the semantic layer.

Career

  1. NowSenzingPrincipal DevRel Engineer
  2. Until 2019O'Reilly MediaDirector
  3. 2019–2023DerwenFounder
  4. 2014DatabricksApache Spark open source evangelist
  5. 2013ConcurrentDirector of Data Science
  6. 1984–1986Stanford UniversityTeaching Fellow

Education

  1. 1986Stanford UniversityBS and MS

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

Most-cited works

  1. Enterprise Data Workflows with Cascading2013 · 9 citations
  2. FRED, Milton and Barry: the evolution of intelligent agents for the Web1997 · IOS Press eBooks · 5 citations
  3. Introduction to Apache Spark2015 · O'Reilly Media, Inc. eBooks · 0 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  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 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 Paco Nathan yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Paco Nathan - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Apache Spark Plus Many Other Frameworks: How Spark Fits into the Big Data Landscape - InfoQ infoq.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Concurrent, Inc.'s Data Scientist to Present at Upcoming Big Data and Enterprise Tech Events firmenpresse.de. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Machine Learning Pioneer Paco Nathan Joins KUNGFU.AI Advisory Board | KUNGFU.AI Blog kungfu.ai. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. ConferenceCall 2020 03 04 - Ontolog Forum ontologforum.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Paco Nathan - Connected Data London 2019 connected-data-london-2019.heysummit.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Speaker: Paco Nathan: Data science + business analytics training: Strata Data Conference conferences.oreilly.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. GitHub - DerwenAI/pytextrank: Python implementation of TextRank algorithms ("textgraphs") for phrase extraction github.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. GitHub - DerwenAI/kglab: Graph Data Science: an abstraction layer in Python for building knowledge graphs github.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. Seminar: ML to Augment Scholarly Infrastructure | Events at The University of Manchester events.manchester.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Paco Nathan: graph thinking to better understand graph RAG knowledgegraphinsights.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Paco Nathan Prominent Data Scientist Joins Senzing - Senzing senzing.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  13. Paco Nathan's Speaker Profile @ Sessionize sessionize.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  14. Graph Power Hour with Paco Nathan senzing.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  15. Knowledge Cast – Paco Nathan, Principal DevRel Engineer at Senzing – Semantic Layer Symposium Series - Enterprise Knowledge enterprise-knowledge.com. Checked 20 October 2026.