# Daphne Koller

> Daphne Koller is an Israeli-American computer scientist, founder and CEO of insitro, and co-founder of Coursera and Engageli. Her career spans probabilistic machine learning research, Stanford teaching, online education, and company leadership. She is a MacArthur Fellow and co-author, with Nir Friedman, of Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques.

- **Role:** Founder & CEO at insitro
- **Organizations:** insitro, Coursera, Engageli, Stanford University, Calico, University of California, Berkeley
- **From:** Jerusalem, Israel
- **Nationality:** Israeli-American
- **Education:** BSc, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MSc, Computer Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, PhD, Computer Science, Stanford University
- **Known for:** MacArthur Fellow, 2004., Inaugural ACM Prize in Computing recipient: 2007 award, presented in 2008., Co-founded Coursera in 2012.

## Career timeline

- **1985** — Completed a BSc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at 17.
- **1986** — Completed her master’s degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- **1989** — Arrived in the United States on July 4 to begin her Stanford PhD.
- **1993** — Completed her Stanford PhD and began postdoctoral research at Berkeley.
- **1995** — Joined Stanford’s computer science faculty in September.
- **2004** — Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
- **2008** — Received the inaugural ACM-Infosys Foundation Award for the 2007 award year.
- **2009** — Published Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques with Nir Friedman.
- **2011** — Elected to the National Academy of Engineering; experimented with interactive online lectures at Stanford.
- **2012** — Co-founded Coursera with Andrew Ng and delivered a TEDGlobal talk on online education.
- **2016** — Left Coursera to become chief computing officer at Calico.
- **2018** — Founded insitro.
- **2019** — Recipient of the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award.
- **2020** — Co-founded Engageli with Dan Avida, Serge Plotkin, and Jamie Nacht Farrell.
- **2023** — Elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
- **2024** — Included in TIME100 AI.
- **2026** — Included in the inaugural Forbes Innovator 250 list.

## Achievements

- MacArthur Fellow, 2004.
- Inaugural ACM Prize in Computing recipient: 2007 award, presented in 2008.
- Co-founded Coursera in 2012.
- Co-authored Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Techniques with Nir Friedman, 2009.
- National Academy of Engineering member, elected 2011.
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, elected 2014.
- ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award recipient, 2019.
- National Academy of Sciences member, elected 2023.
- TIME100 AI honoree, 2024.
- Forbes Innovator 250 honoree, 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Marked the anniversary of her July 4, 1989 arrival in the United States in a public LinkedIn reflection on opportunity and access.
- **2026-02** — Included at number 160 in Forbes’ inaugural list of 250 living American innovators.
- **2026-02** — insitro appointed Joe Hand as chief people officer, with responsibility for talent, organizational development, and culture.

## Links

- Website: https://ai.stanford.edu/~koller/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-koller-4053a820
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/DaphneKoller

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/daphne-koller
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-11