Dr. Hassan Sawaf

Hassan Sawaf has over 30 years of experience in AI technologies, founding and leading machine learning organizations that are now leaders in their respective fields. He was the project manager for the first fully-automatic SITA messaging system at Daimler Benz InterServices GmbH in 1996. After working as a senior researcher at the University of Aachen, Hassan co-founded AIXPLAIN AG, which developed a commercial speech-to-speech translation system in 2002. Later, as COO and Chief Scientist at AppTek, he introduced the first hybrid machine translation system and developed several speech recognition engines, which contributed to AppTek’s acquisition by SAIC in 2010.

Hassan went on to become a Chief Scientist at SAIC (later Leidos), where he was awarded the title of “SAIC Technical Fellow” in 2011. He later joined eBay as Senior Director, where he pioneered the use of machine translation for cross-border trade and led AI/ML initiatives at Amazon and Facebook. In 2020, he founded aiXplain, a platform designed to make AI accessible and intuitive for everyone. Hassan is also an investor, board member, and advisor to numerous startups and companies worldwide, including Tarjama, AppTek, Embodied, and Pi School.