Dr. Anand Rao
Anand Rao, Ph.D., MBA is Principal, Partner, and Global Artificial Intelligence Lead at PwC, with over 29 years of industry and consulting experience, helping senior executives structure, solve, and manage critical issues facing their organizations.
Anand is the co-lead for the Global Project Blue, Future of Insurance research and is responsible for research and commercial relationships with academic institutions and startups focused on new and innovative big data and analytic techniques. With his Ph.D. and research career in Artificial Intelligence and his experience in management consulting, he brings business domain knowledge, statistical, and computational analytics to generate unique insights into the practice of data science.
He leads their Artificial Intelligence efforts globally and is also the Innovation Lead for PwC’s US Data & Analytics. He is responsible for a team of practitioners who work with C-level executives, advising them on a range of topics including global growth strategies, marketing, distribution, digital strategies, behavioral economics, risk management, and statistical and computational analytics. His experience spans primarily financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and healthcare. He has been Partner at PwC’s U.S. Insurance Advisory Services since November 2010.
Since 2001, Anand was Manager, Principal, and finally a Partner at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants before it was acquired by PwC in 2010.
Prior to his strategic management consulting career, Anand led and managed innovative artificial-intelligence based approaches for air-combat modeling, air-traffic management, customer service decision support, and telecommunications network management. He also taught and supervised doctoral students at the University of Melbourne and served as the Program Director of the Center for Intelligent Decision Systems.
For nine years, between 1988 and 1997, Anand was Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute.
Leaving academia, he joined Agent Oriented Software group, the Australian AI company since 1997. AOS is a software and robotics company specializing in autonomous and intelligent systems.
In 1998, he joined Mitchell Madison Group as Associate and after two years, as Associate joined marchFIRST.
Anand held board positions at startups and currently serves as a board member for not-for-profit industry associations.
He earned his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sydney in 1988, where he holds the University Postgraduate Research Award. He earned his Master’s Degree of Science in Computer Science from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilan in 1984. In 1997, Anand received his MBA in Finance and Technology from the Melbourne Business School.
Since 2012, Anand has been learning through online courses covering a variety of subjects including Data Analysis, Model Thinking, R Programming, Neuroeconomics, Mining Massive Datasets, Statistical Inference, Regression Models, Neural Networks for Machine Learning, and many others.
He co-edited four books and has published over fifty peer-reviewed papers in conferences and journals. Anand frequently speaks at technology and business forums on analytics, AI, behavioral economics, and innovation. He has served on the Organizing and Program Committees of International Journals, Conferences, and Workshops and is currently a Board Member of RIIA.
Anand has lived and worked for clients in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas.
Read his contributions at PwC US Blog and Strategy and Business page. Read We are only in 1984 in terms of the evolution of AI. Visit his LinkedIn profile and PwC page. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
