Paul Horn, PHD (Draft) VENLY EXECUTIVE CHAIR; VENLY & PEAKE FELLOWSHIP DEVELOPMENT TEAM FOUNDING PARTNER

Dr. Paul Horn is a MediaWiki impact contributor who joined the Peake Development Team in 2015 after his former roles as Senior VP of IBM Research; New York University Senior Vice Provost for Research; and Chair of the New York Academy of Sciences during its 200th year. Dr. Horn helped inspire the focus on MediaWiki as a mass scale infrastructure in 2005 during his time as leader of IBM’s 3,200 technical employees across eight sites in five countries around the world. Under Paul’s leadership, IBM pioneered the Watson artificial intelligence system and a wide range of innovations in big data and autonomic computing aligned with IBM’s overall focus on open source. Beginning in 2015, Paul began day-to-day guidance of the Peake Development Team’s focus on how the MediaWiki open source platform could drive community microcredentials as part of a nationwide DoD-aligned mobilization for applied learning. In that role, he has been active nationally with needs assessments of local businesses and their industry ecosystems, local chambers of commerce & other trade/professional associations, higher ed institutions, and the DoD. As a first generation college student himself, Dr. Horn has had a focus on strengthening the impact of Minority Serving Institutions based on their leadership in serving both first generation students and their anchor communities.

Prior to IBM, Dr. Horn was a tenured professor in the Physics Department at the University of Chicago and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. After IBM, he helped found the New York University Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). He holds a BS in Physics from Clarkson University and a PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester. Dr. Horn is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous industry and science honors for his contributions at the intersection of business and technology.
Photo source: IBM