Ashlesha Nesarikar

Ashlesha Nesarikar is Founder and CEO of Plano Intelligence, a Texas based AI company committed to the constructive social impact of AI. Their privacy and security centric cognitive AI platform, iCognet, is a reusable, plug & play, and versatile foundation for existing and future AI applications, including COVID-19 remote patient monitoring, flash flood warning, public safety, and more. She has spoken about the technology on TV, radio, and print and online interviews.

Ashlesha leads a multidisciplinary collaboration on a cognitive AI approach to help communities, healthcare workers, patients, and their families while reducing stress on critical care infrastructure and services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their paper on the approach: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.123... technology and business conferences, Ashlesha has spoken on AI, its operationalization, and societal impacts.

Ashlesha was invited to speak about iCognet at SXSW 2020. Ashlesha was invited to speak on the Ethics in AI and Facial Recognition panel of the Big Data and AI Conference (2019). As an engineer, researcher, entrepreneur, and believer in civil liberties, she offered a nuanced perspective on the effects of facial recognition on privacy and personal liberties. She urged for developing “civic intuition of AI”, whereby every citizen has opportunity to contribute to AI’s future direction. She presented iCognet at a national conference in Denver, CO (2019) by invitation from US Ignite, a NSF initiative to promote next-generation applications.

A supporter of STEM and AI education and outreach, Ashlesha was invited to industry workshops to present an entrepreneur’s commercialization experience. Attended by industry experts and managers to learn the state of the art in AI, her talks bridge the gap between AI fact and fiction. She has spoken before students of all levels to promote STEM education and its relevance to AI and ML. Ashlesha co-authored multiple AI-related patents.

Sub-specialities:
Cognitive Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Machine Learning (ML)
Social impact of AI
Privacy and ethics in technology
Real time systems
Real-time remote patient monitoring (e.g. for COVID-19 or for patients in rural areas)
Smart cities
Big data