Andy Konwinski, co-founder of Databricks, Perplexity, and Laude Ventures, will speak at UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) undergraduate commencement ceremonies on May 22.
Konwinski’s work stands at the intersection of research and real-world impact in artificial intelligence, data, and software infrastructure. He completed his Ph.D. in computer science at UC Berkeley in 2012.
Konwinski currently serves as president at Perplexity and was previously vice president of AI product management at Databricks. Last December, he launched Laude Ventures in partnership with Berkeley alumni Pete Sonsini and Andrew Krioukov to invest in nascent technology startups with researcher founders.
While a graduate student at Berkeley, Konwinski contributed to the development of the open-source framework Apache Hadoop and co-created Apache Mesos and Apache Spark. This spring, he is co-teaching the Research to Startup seminar for Ph.D. students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley.
The commencement ceremonies for CDSS undergraduate students will take place on May 22 at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley. The first ceremony will be held at 9 am Pacific Time, and the second ceremony will be held at 2 pm Pacific Time. The ceremonies will honor students graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science, Data Science, and Statistics in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Summer 2025, or Fall 2025.