Anand Rao

Anand Rao has focused on research, innovation, applications, business and societal adoption of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence over his 35-year consulting, industry, and academic career. Anand was the Global Artificial Intelligence Leader for PwC, a Partner in their Data, Analytics, and AI practice, and the Innovation lead for AI in PwC’s Products and Technology segment.  Anand led a team of practitioners who advised C-level executives, develop, and implement advanced analytics and AI-based solutions across several industry sectors including financial services, insurance, healthcare, technology-media-telecommunications, retail, aerospace, and defense sectors. With his PhD and research career in Artificial Intelligence and his subsequent experience in management consulting he brings business domain knowledge, software engineering expertise, statistical expertise, and modeling expertise to generate unique insights into the practice of ‘data science’ and artificial intelligence.

Prior to joining management consulting, Anand was the Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute building agent-based models and simulation systems and conducting research in the theory and practice of multi-agent systems.

Anand’s current research interests include operationalizing AI, responsible AI, systems thinking, ROI of AI, theory and practice of building agent-based models and digital twins, behavioral economics, and human decision-making.

He received his PhD from University of Sydney (with a University Postgraduate Research Award-UPRA) in 1988 and an MBA (with Award of Distinction) from Melbourne Business School in 1997. Anand has also co-edited four books on Intelligent Agents and has published over fifty papers in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in major journals, conferences, and workshops.  In addition, he has authored over hundred articles in the business and trade press.

He has received widespread recognition for his extraordinary contributions in the field of consulting and Artificial Intelligence Research.  He has received the Most Influential Paper Award for the Decade in 2007 from the Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems organization for his contribution on the Belief-Desire-Intention Architecture; MBA Award of Distinction from Melbourne Business School, 1997 and University Postgraduate Research Award (UPRA) from University of Sydney, 1985; Distinguished Alumnus Award from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India; He was recognized as one of Top 50 Data & Analytics professionals in USA and Canada by Corinium; one of Top 50 professionals in InsureTech; one of Top 25 Technology Leaders in Consulting; Top AI Leaders of 2024 by Rethink Retail; and has won a number of awards for his academic and business papers.

Anand is a Venture Partner at Golden Sparrow, an early-stage VC fund and is also a Strategic Advisor at Innospark Ventures. He acts as an Advisor and Board member for Roots Automation and is the Advisory Chair of the Center for Data Science and Social Good at the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM). He is an Adjunct Professor in BITS Pilani’s APPCAIR AI Center. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI, World Economic Forum’s Global AI Council, OECD’s Network of Experts on AI (ONE), OECD’s AI Compute initiative, Advisory Board of Northwestern’s MBAi program,  Responsible AI Institute, Nordic AI Institute, and International Congress for the Governance of AI.