Daphne Koller is an Israeli-American computer scientist and entrepreneur. She was a professor of computer science at Stanford University, a co-founder of the online education platform Coursera, and the founder of the AI-driven drug discovery startup Insitro.
Probabilistic Graphical Models and Coursera
Koller earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her Ph.D. from Stanford in 1993. Her research pioneered the use of probabilistic graphical models in machine learning, combining graph theory and probability to build systems that reason under uncertainty. In 2012, she co-founded Coursera with Andrew Ng, democratizing access to high-quality university courses globally.
AI for Biotechnology and Insitro
In 2018, Koller founded Insitro, a biotech company that uses machine learning and high-throughput biology to revolutionize drug discovery. Insitro leverages generative models and cellular imaging to predict how target molecules behave, accelerating therapeutic development.
