Andrew Maas

I am VP of AI at micro1, leading development of data-centric ML systems that produce training data, evaluations, and expert feedback for frontier AI labs. I also founded DeepForest.org, which operates living laboratories to explore how robotics and AI can scale up carbon-negative land management practices. At Stanford, I teach CS 224S: Spoken Language Processing and support AI efforts within the StartX founder network.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science at Stanford in 2015 advised by Andrew Ng and Dan Jurafsky, with dissertation work on deep neural networks in speech recognition. My research was supported by a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship. I hold a BS in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon (2009). My research sits at the intersection of machine learning, natural language processing, machine perception, and cognitive science. Human perception and learning are remarkable when we consider the complex data entering our senses, and developing algorithms to automatically find structure in audio, text, images, and other data will enable autonomous systems to better integrate into everyday life to positively transform the ways we live and work.

• 2025 – 2026 Director of Engineering, Apple. Deep learning architectures for speech technology and LLM-based approaches to spoken dialogue systems.
• 2023 – 2025 Founder & CEO, Pointable. Optimized retrieval systems for enterprise LLM applications. Acquired by Apple in 2025; the Pointable website and blog are no longer active as a result.
• 2019 – 2023 Senior Manager, Apple Special Projects Group. Led teams building data-centric deep learning approaches and tooling for robot autonomy.
• 2013 – 2019 Co-founder & Chief Scientist, Roam Analytics. Healthcare natural-language-processing platform. Acquired by Parexel.
• 2015 – 2016 Research Scientist, Semantic Machines. Spoken-language deep learning. Acquired by Microsoft.