Mike Cohen

Mike Cohen is the CEO and founder of Cignition. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, in computer science. Mike’s early career was spent as a math “user”—as a researcher and engineer and composer. Since 2012 he has dedicated his career to improving math education. He spent 28 years working on speech and language technologies, first as Principal Investigator on a series of research grants while at SRI from 1984-94, then as cofounder of Nuance Communications from 1994-2004, and following that as creator and leader of Google’s speech technology team from 2004-2012. Mike received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. He is author of more than 80 research papers, a book, “Voice User Interface Design” (Addison-Wesley 2004), has been the subject of many radio and magazine interviews, and is an inventor on more than 20 granted patents in speech and language technology as well as in education technology. He is also a musician and composer, having performed widely (including the Montreux Jazz Festival and San Jose Jazz Festival) and contributed as composer, arranger, or performer on numerous albums. In 2012, Mike initiated a collaboration with neuroscientists, master teachers, and game designers to improve math education. That effort resulted in the founding of Cignition and the development of their virtual world environment Fog Stone Isle.