Dr. Stefan Hild

Computer and Data Scientist, Engineer, Entrepreneur

Stefan Hild is a veteran in the global IT industry with 30 years of experience as a mentor, innovator, leader, and business executive. He has a proven track record of capturing emerging trends and developing them into products, and to date has contributed to 44 issued patents. Stefan is a prolific speaker on AI, Data Science and related topics and has authored many scientific publications, books, and conference papers.

Stefan started “Cognitive Solutions” in 2017 to deliver AI-solutions for industrial applications in the manufacturing industry. At Cognitive he also conceived the concepts behind ConnectedAI, a groundbreaking innovation that makes AI-based problem-solving accessible to industrial clients at scale. Cognitive was acquired by the ei3 Corporation, New York, in 2021.

Prior to becoming an entrepreneur Stefan held various high-level positions at IBM, including Executive Partner responsible for Industrial Solutions and most high-profile client projects. Stefan holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, England. He is happiest flying his Piper Malibu to new places and enjoys sharing fine food and wine with family and friends.

Early Life and Education

Dr. Hild attended Regiomontanus-Gymnasium in Hassfurt, Germany, where he specialized in mathematics and physics in his final year. As a secondary student, Dr. Hild won a “Jugend Forscht” Young Scientist award, which granted him the opportunity to conduct research at the University of Wuerzburg, as well as an internship with the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. At the University of Wuerzburg, Dr. Hild helped conduct research for a PAKMA project involved with creating software capable of measuring and modeling experiments. PAKMA stands for Physik Aktiv Messen, Modellieren, Analysieren. Dr. Hild designed the software conceptually, implemented the software, and delivered a functioning system which garnered recognition from project members.

While still in high school Hild became contributor to “Bit, Byte, Gebissen”, Germany’s first radio show focussed on the topic of “home” computers and video game consoles, which was produced and broadcast by German broadcaster “Bayerischer Rundfunk” from 1985 to 1993.

He completed his undergraduate degree at King’s College, and St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge, England, where he received both his Masters and his PhD in Computer Science. He holds distinction as a life fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and published his Ph.D. thesis, “Managing mobile connections” in 1997 while working under Professor Peter Robinson, at the University of Cambridge “Rainbow” Graphics and Interaction Group.

Also in Cambridge, Dr. Hild published “A brief history of mobile telephony” in 1995. Dr. Hild attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a visiting student during the 1995-1996 academic year, where he worked in the group of Professor David L. Tennenhouse. He is also a member of the Association for Computing Imagery (ACM), the Institution of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), and Mensa.

Career

Dr. Hild’s professional career spans consulting, project management, IT strategy, solutions architecture and integration. He is often referenced as an expert on the industrial applications of artificial intelligence.

IBM

He began his career at IBM in 1997 as a manager and research staff member at the world-renowned IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, before transitioning to become a senior manager in 2002 in IBM’s Research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, New York. Dr. Hild’s project – the mobile phone-based check-in solution developed for Swissair, built upon his PhD work in Cambridge and was completed during his tenure in Zurich. This project saw the first implementation of software giving customers online scheduling information and flight change notices. In 2006, Dr. Hild was appointed to an executive role and returned to Zurich, where he led IBM’s customer project development activities, liaising with clients in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEEMEA), and Austria and Switzerland. During his leadership of the IBM Industrial Sector group, he was involved in the release of the Watson products, a line of products combining techniques of natural language understanding (NLP), speech to text, and translation to incorporate AI-driven insights into specific industry environments.

Among major projects developed under his leadership, Dr. Hild delivered a “digital consultant” to LafargeHolcim to support operators to make correct decisions for cement manufacturing, leading to significant advances in efficient and sustainable industrial manufacturing.

COGNITIVE SOLUTIONS AND INNOVATION AG

In January of 2017, Dr. Hild founded Cognitive Solutions and Innovation AG and led the company to develop AI and data-backed solutions to industrial manufacturing problems. Cognitive Solutions AG aimed to provide clients with analytics driven insights into operator practices, asset utilization processes, and sustainable development strategies. In its first 2 years of operation Cognitive Solutions became profitable and delivered AI projects to industry heavyweights such as ABB, Andritz, Milacron and Bobst. In 2019, Cognitive Solutions partnered with ei3 and finally merged based on a stock-swap agreement in 2021. He presented “From Hype to Reality” in Brussels in 2019 at the smart production solutions messe (sps), where he discussed the tangible benefits underlying the excitement of artificial intelligence applications.

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Since the merger, Dr. Hild has acted as Vice President of data science at ei3 and is a member of ei3’s board of directors. Dr. Hild has overseen the development of ConnectedAI, which offers manufacturers AI-based solutions for increased industrial efficiency and sustainability.

During his tenure with ei3 Dr. Hild has also presented at various conferences in Porto, New York, and Zurich, where he has shared use cases of Artificial Intelligence to improve product quality, reduce energy consumption and ultimately improve productivity.

At the International Textile Manufacturing Federation in Porto in 2019, Dr. Hild presented “The Future of Artificial Intelligence is Human,” where he shared ideas regarding the usability of remote service data and the efficiencies of the data sets offered by ConnectedAI. He has been cited in the development of ConnectedAI, where “ORBIS, a leading manufacturer of reusable plastics and containers uses groundbreaking AI technology from ei3 to save more energy per machine per day than an average American household uses per month.”

Patents

Some of Hild’s inventions include a patent for monitoring events in a computer network and managing access to wireless communications in an enclosed system.

SELECTED PATENTS

US7930312B2, Hild, Stefan G.; Pawlitzek, Rene A. & Rjaibi, Walid W. et al., “System for consolidating data from distributed databases”, filed April 28, 2003, and, issued April 19, 2011.
US7482929B2, Bowers, Richard G.; Hild, Stefan G. & Lindsey, Paul D. et al., “Point-of-sale activation of consumer electronics”, filed May 1, 2006, and issued January 27, 2009.
US7324108B2, Hild, Stefan G.; Pawlitzek, Rene & Stolze, Markus, “Monitoring events in a computer network”, filed March 12, 2003 and issued January 29, 2008.
US8452286B2, Binding, Carl & Hild, Stefan G., “Wireless communication”, filed November 11, 2002, and issued May 28, 2013.

Awards and Fellowships

IBM master inventor honorific award, 2009
Elected student fellow of the IEEE, 1996
Life fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1995
Alan Fairburn Memorial Prize for BSc Thesis at King’s College, Cambridge, 1995
Sambrooke Exhibition Prize, 1992
Scholarship of the British Council; Scholarship of the “Max-Plank Gesellschaft”, 1991
Schaeffler FAGF.A.G Foundation Prize, 1991

Selected Publications

“The Wireless Application Protocol: Writing Applications for the Mobile Internet”, S. Singhal, J. Alvinen, T. Bridgman, D. Bevis, L. Suryanarayana, J. Chan, D. Mauney, S. Hild, Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70311-4, 2000.
“Application Hosting for Pervasive Computing”, S. G. Hild, C. Binding, D. Bourges-Waldegg, C. Steenkeste, IBM Systems Journal, 40 (1), 2000.
“Generation of Java Beans to Access XML Data”. C. Binding, D. Bourges-Waldegg, S. G. Hild, Proceedings of Web Information Systems Engineering WISE, Hong Kong, June 2000.
“e-Cash Withdrawal using Mobile Telephone”, C. Binding, S. Hild, L. O’Connor, IBM Technical Report RZ3113, March 1999.
“Secure and Verifiable Transcoding with SERVANT”, S. G. Hild, L. O’Connor, Proceedings of the IBM Pervasive Computing Conference, Yorktown Heights, NY, 1999.
“Mobilizing Applications”, Stefan G. Hild, Peter Robinson, IEEE Personal Communications, October 1997.
“Implementing Hyperlog, a Graph-Based Database Language”, S. G. Hild and A. Poulovassilis, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, September 1996

Personal Life

Stefan Hild is a certified private pilot with instrument ratings, having accumulated more than 1000 flight hours by 2021. He enjoys flying his Piper Malibu (a 1985 PA46-310P) in his spare time. His flight experience spans instrument flying in the European and North American airspace environment. He is recognized as a ferry pilot with experience flying the North Atlantic route in single engine airplanes.