Aya Chasia Soffer () is an Israeli

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, vice president for AI Technology in

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York ...

, and the director of IBM's

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

research laboratory.

Education and career

Soffer is the daughter of two scientists. She received her bachelor's degree from the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

in 1986 and worked in the

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to revea ...

industry for four years before continuing to the department of computer science at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

where she received a master's degree in 1992 and her PhD in 1995. Her dissertation, ''Retrieval by Content in Symbolic-Image Databases'', concerned

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...

, and was supervised by

Hanan Samet Hanan Samet is a Computer Science researcher and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland's Computer Science Department, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. ...

. After receiving her PhD she worked for the

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

as a research scientist working on

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

digital libraries for Earth science data. She began working at IBM in 1999. She was part of the

IBM Watson IBM Watson is a computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It was developed as a part of IBM's DeepQA project by a research team, led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's fou ...

project, and beginning in 2012, IBM's Project Debater, before taking on her current responsibilities as vice president for AI Technology and head of the Haifa laboratory for IBM Research.

Recognition

Soffer was named one of the most influential women ("Power Women") by Forbes Israel in 2019, in 2020 she was named of the 100 most influential people influencing life in Israel by

TheMarker ''TheMarker'' () is a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper published by the Haaretz Group in Israel. ''TheMarker'' was founded in 1999 by journalist and entrepreneur Guy Rolnik along with Haaretz Group and U.S.-based investors. Five years ...

, and in 2021 one of the 50 most influential women in Israel by

Globes A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe o ...

References

External links

Aya Soffer
IBM Research * {{DEFAULTSORT:Soffer, Aya Living people Israeli computer scientists Israeli women computer scientists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni University of Maryland, College Park alumni IBM Research computer scientists IBM Women Year of birth missing (living people)