Faculty Directory

Faculty Fellows

During his more than 25 years of award-winning work in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Dr. David Ferrucci has created computers that fluently think, learn, and communicate. He started and led the IBM Watson team from inception through defeating the greatest Jeopardy champions of all time. Later in his career, he founded Elemental Cognition, an AI company focused on deep natural language understanding. Ferrucci has 50+ patents and papers in the areas of AI, Automated Reasoning, NLP, Intelligent Systems Architectures, Automatic Text Generation, and Automatic Question-Answering. He has led numerous projects in AI systems for manufacturing, configuration, document generation, and standards for large-scale text and multi-modal analytics. He also keynotes at distinguished venues worldwide and has been interviewed by media outlets such as The New York Times, PBS, Financial Times, Bloomberg and the BBC.

Pete McNerney is a senior advisor at Thomas, McNerney & Partners, a health care venture firm that invests in life science and medical technology. Prior to joining Thomas, McNerney & Partners, he co-founded Coral Ventures, The Kensington Group, and Memtec North American. McNerney spent 11 years with Baxter Healthcare Corporations, holding management positions in the United States, Europe, Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, an MBA from Stanford, and served as a 2014 fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative program.

Mark Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which performs research and advocacy for economics and policy. He also co-founded the Digital Power Group, Digital Power Capital, and ICx Technologies. A columnist for Forbes, Mills has published widely, with works appearing in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine, among others. A trained experimental physicist and development engineer, Mills served as a staff consultant to the White House Science Office under President Ronald Reagan, a number of federal research laboratories, and the US Department of Energy. He earned a bachelor's degree from Queen’s University in Canada and is a member of the American Physical Society and Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers.

Howard A. Tullman is the CEO of 1871 – where digital startups get their start - and the General Managing Partner of G2T3V, LLC and of Chicago High Tech Investment Partners. He is a member of Mayor Emanuel’s Chicago NEXT and Cultural Affairs Councils; the Innovate Illinois Advisory and Arts Councils; a member of President Preckwinkle’s New Media Council; an Adjunct Professor at Kellogg; and an advisor to many start-ups. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint College and Kendall College. Over the last 48 years, he has successfully founded more than a dozen high-tech companies.

Dr. Wolcott is Co-founder and Chairman of The World Innovation Network (TWIN; www.twinglobal.org), a community of over 2,000 innovation leaders from over 30 countries. As Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, from 2009-2019, he won Teacher of the Year from Kellogg’s EMBA program 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. He is also a managing partner with Clareo, a foresight and growth strategy consultancy. He serves on advisory boards for H-Farm (Italy), the Open Innovation Lab of Norway, and the board of CureBlindness, a non-profit that has restored sight to over 500,000 people across the developing world. Wolcott is also a regular contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business, society and humanity, and to numerous other publications, and an active angel investor in over 20 companies. He received his BA, European and Chinese History; MS and Ph.D., Industrial Engineering & Management Science, all from Northwestern University.