Andrew Ng
Born 1976 · Age 50
British-American computer scientist, entrepreneur and AI leader; cofounder of Google Brain and Coursera, founder of DeepLearning.AI, Landing AI, and Managing General Partner of the AI Fund.
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Life & Career Timeline
Born in London, United Kingdom
Andrew Yan-Tak Ng was born in London to parents originally from Hong Kong (born to Ronald P. Ng and Tisa Ho).
Family moved back to Hong Kong (early childhood)
Ng and his family moved from London back to Hong Kong, where he spent his early childhood years.
Started learning programming
At about age six, Ng began learning the basics of programming from books.
Family moved to Singapore
Ng and his family relocated from Hong Kong to Singapore.
Graduated Raffles Institution (approx.)
Completed secondary education at Raffles Institution in Singapore (approximate year based on later university matriculation).
Won Silver Medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad
Demonstrated exceptional mathematical ability by winning a Silver Medal at the IMO while in high school.
Microsoft Technical Scholarship (first)
Received a Microsoft Technical Scholarship as an undergraduate.
Bell Atlantic Network Services Scholarship
Awarded the Bell Atlantic Network Services Scholarship while an undergraduate.
Microsoft Technical Scholarship (second)
Received an additional Microsoft Technical Scholarship during undergraduate study.
Andrew Carnegie Society Scholarship
Recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Society Scholarship while an undergraduate.
Started research at AT&T Bell Labs
Conducted research related to reinforcement learning, model selection, and feature selection at AT&T Bell Labs (research period spans mid-late 1990s, often cited as 1996–1998).
Earned BS (Carnegie Mellon) – triple major
Received an undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University with a triple major in Computer Science, Statistics, and Economics.
Berkeley Fellowship (start)
Awarded a Berkeley Fellowship to support doctoral study at UC Berkeley (fellowship period commonly cited as 1998–2000).
Completed MS at MIT; built indexed web-search engine for research papers
Earned an MS in EECS from MIT and built an early publicly-accessible automatically-indexed research-paper search engine (precursor to specialized academic search tools).
Microsoft Research Fellowship (2001–2002)
Received a Microsoft Research Fellowship during PhD studies (often listed for 2001–2002).
Ph.D. in Computer Science (UC Berkeley)
Awarded a Ph.D. under Michael I. Jordan. Thesis: "Shaping and policy search in reinforcement learning."
Joined Stanford University as Assistant Professor
Started as an assistant professor in Stanford University's Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments and worked with the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL).
Co-authored Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) paper (JMLR 2003)
Coauthored a seminal paper on Latent Dirichlet Allocation with David Blei and Michael Jordan, a major contribution to topic modeling.
Led Stanford Autonomous Helicopter and STAIR/ROS-related robotics research
Principal investigator on autonomous helicopter control research and on STAIR-related robotics projects, contributing to early robot-software (ROS) and robotics research at Stanford.
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship
Received a Sloan Research Fellowship recognizing early-career scientific excellence.
Advocated GPU use for deep learning; released Stanford course materials online
One of the early groups to push GPU adoption for deep-learning training; published some Stanford course materials online (Stanford Engineering Everywhere), which later helped seed MOOCs.
Named MIT Technology Review TR35 (Innovators Under 35)
Recognized as one of MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 for contributions to AI and machine learning.
IJCAI 'Computers and Thought' Award
Received the IJCAI 'Computers and Thought' Award, a prestigious recognition for researchers under 35.
Promoted to Associate Professor at Stanford
Promoted to associate professor and continued directing research at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence lab.
Co-founded Google Brain (deep learning research project)
Co-founded and helped lead the Google Brain deep-learning research project with colleagues including Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga.
Stanford launched MOOCs including Ng's Machine Learning course
Stanford released large-scale online course materials/MOOCs (including Ng's Machine Learning course), helping accelerate the modern MOOC movement.
Launched ml-class.org – large-scale online Machine Learning class
Launched ML-class (ml-class.org), an applied version of the Stanford ML course; the first edition served over 100,000 students and helped seed Coursera and modern MOOCs.
Google Brain published large-scale unsupervised learning results ('cat' result)
The Google Brain team trained large-scale neural networks that learned to recognize concepts (e.g., the 'cat' result), demonstrating unsupervised feature learning at scale.
Included in Fortune's 40 Under 40 & CNN 10 'Thinkers'
Recognized by Fortune among its 40 Under 40 and featured by CNN as a notable 'Thinker' for influence in technology.
Co-founded Coursera (with Daphne Koller)
Co-founded Coursera, a major MOOC platform offering courses worldwide, initially offering many free courses with paid options later.
Named to Time 100 Most Influential People
Named among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People for contributions to artificial intelligence and education.
Joined Baidu as Chief Scientist & VP (head of AI Group)
Hired as Baidu's Chief Scientist and vice president, leading and expanding the company's AI Group (reportedly growing to ~1,300 people) and overseeing major AI initiatives.
Married Carol E. Reiley
Married Carol E. Reiley, a roboticist and entrepreneur.
Named among Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business (2014)
Recognized by Fast Company for creativity and leadership at the intersection of business and AI.
Named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader
Selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in recognition of leadership and impact.
Board member at drive.ai (approx.)
Served as a board member for drive.ai (exact appointment year not precisely specified in public sources).
Board chair role at Woebot Labs (approx.)
Served in a board role (chair) for Woebot Labs, a company developing mental-health chatbots (appointment year approximate).
Published 'Machine Learning Yearning' (free distribution)
Authored and distributed 'Machine Learning Yearning', a practical guide for machine-learning practitioners, made available freely.
Founded Landing AI (Executive Chairman)
Started Landing AI to deliver AI-powered SaaS products and help enterprises adopt AI, serving in leadership/Executive Chairman roles.
Resigned from Baidu
Announced resignation from Baidu to pursue new projects focused on AI education and startups.
Founded DeepLearning.AI
Launched DeepLearning.AI to provide structured, practical deep-learning education and specializations (distributed via Coursera and other platforms).
Launched the AI Fund (announced $175M)
Unveiled the AI Fund — an investment vehicle initially backed by roughly $175 million to back AI startups; Ng serves as founder/general partner.
Reported author of 200+ research publications (profile milestone)
Profiles and CVs list more than 200 publications across machine learning, robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing.
Launched 'AI for Everyone' course
Published 'AI for Everyone' (a non-technical course) through DeepLearning.AI/Coursera to broaden AI understanding across industries.
Published 'AI Transformation Playbook'
Released 'AI Transformation Playbook', a guide for companies adopting AI, a follow-up in spirit to 'Machine Learning Yearning'.
drive.ai acquired by Apple
drive.ai, a company where Ng served on the board, was acquired by Apple in 2019.
Coursera and DeepLearning.AI courses ranked among platform's most popular
By 2020–2021, multiple Ng courses (Machine Learning, Neural Networks, AI for Everyone) ranked among Coursera's most popular offerings.
Birth of first child (daughter)
Public announcement of the birth of his first child (daughter).
Birth of second child (son)
Public announcement of the birth of his second child (a son).
Landing AI Series A — $57M raised
Landing AI raised $57 million in a Series A round led by McRock Capital to scale computer-vision adoption in manufacturing.
Named to Time AI 100 / Time's most influential in AI
Included in Time's 'AI 100' / lists of most influential people in AI.
Reported residence and ongoing roles in Silicon Valley
Reportedly living and working from Los Altos Hills, California, holding roles including Executive Chairman at Landing AI, Founder of DeepLearning.AI, General Partner at AI Fund, Chair & Co-Founder at Coursera, and adjunct roles at Stanford.
Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society
Awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Statistical Society in recognition of contributions to statistics and data science.
Reportedly his wife filed for divorce
Public records and reporting indicate that his wife filed for divorce (reported in 2024 coverage).
Appointed to Amazon's Board of Directors
Amazon announced the appointment of Andrew Ng to its board of directors amid increased interest in generative AI and platform strategy.
AI Fund invests in Indian healthcare startup Jivi
The AI Fund made its first India investment by backing Jivi, an AI healthcare startup (reported Oct 2024).
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