Mu Qiao           

Mu Qiao is a Research Group Leader in the Department of Enterprise AI, Systems & Solutions at IBM Research, where he leads a team of AI/ML scientists and engineers, driving innovation from research to production. He is currently leading research in AI foundation models for domain adaptations, which integrate in-context learning, fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning from human feedback to accelerate the development of enterprise AI applications (including GPT powered chatbots for customer care, named entity recognition, content summarization, among others). He has been working in the areas of Data Security and Trustworthy AI, including data protection, governance, resiliency, veracity (disinformation), explainability, and adversarial robustness. The technologies he has developed are used as the core AI engines of multiple IBM products and offerings in data backup and protection services, cyber resiliency, hybrid cloud migration, and IT service knowledge management, achieving significant business impact in revenue increase and cost saving. Dr. Qiao was twice designated an IBM Master Inventor (in 2019 and 2022). He is the Chair of IBM Global Corporate-Wide Invention Development Team (IDT) for Trustworthy AI. As the Global IDT Chair, Dr. Qiao helps set the direction of patent portfolio in Trustworthy AI for the company, and leads a global team of IBM Master Inventors to provide technical and business assessments of patent applications, promote creative problem solving, and mentor new inventors. He is also the Chair of IBM Northern California Asian American Business Resource Group, which aims to improve workforce diversity, inclusion, Asian American leadership skills, and advance professional development. Dr. Qiao is an IBM Quantum Ambassador, representing IBM Quantum offerings and messaging publicly. He holds 70+ US Patents/Patent Applications in the areas of AI, deep learning, cloud computing, knowledge graph, and blockchain. His contributions have been recognized by many IBM awards, including IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Outstanding Research Accomplishment Award, and High Value Patent Award. Dr. Qiao was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology, which consists of IBM's most accomplished technologists from across the company.

Dr. Qiao has served as organization chair, technical program committee member, and reviewer for many top tier AI and machine learning conferences (ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, IJCAI, ICDM, and etc.), as well as panelist on U.S. National Science Foundation - Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) programs. He was the Industry and Government Program Chair at the IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). Dr. Qiao initiated and founded the IBM Research Accelerated Discovery Forum, which brings together IBM and external distinguished researchers and practitioners to share their expertise in all areas related with AI and big data, and fosters cross-functional and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The forum has hosted hundreds of world famous speakers from industry, government, and academia, and attracted tens of thousands of attendees. It has become the IBM Almaden Distinguished Speaker Series.

Mu Qiao obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering and M.S. in Statistics (concurrent) from The Pennsylvania State University in 2012. He obtained his B.S. (Highest Honors) in Computer Science from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2007. Dr. Qiao has held research intern positions at eBay Research Labs, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and Xerox PARC.