Today, the Allen Institute announced the hiring of veteran technology leader Andy Hickl as Chief Technology Officer. Most recently, Hickl served as Chief Innovation Officer for Applied Intelligence at the global professional services company Accenture. He previously held leadership positions at Microsoft, Intel, and Vulcan where he worked closely with Allen Institute founder Paul Allen as his Executive Technical Advisor.

“The combination of recent advances in computation and AI with the Allen Institute’s large datasets can transform our understanding of the brain, the immune system, and our cells,” said Allen Institute President & CEO Rui Costa.

Andy has an impressive professional history in the data, computing, and innovation spaces and will be catalytic in driving our mission forward.

Rui Costa, D.V.M, Ph.D, President & CEO, Allen Institute

Throughout his career, Hickl has led teams that used natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer vision to tackle some of the world’s most important problems—from climate change and clean energy to biodiversity and global health. At the Allen Institute, Hickl and the Institute’s research teams will apply these same technologies to understand foundational principles that govern life, and to advance health.

“I am incredibly excited to join the Allen Institute and contribute to solving some of the hardest problems in bioscience,” said Hickl. “The prospect of leveraging the very latest in large-scale AI and machine learning techniques to support life-changing scientific breakthroughs truly inspires me.”

Hickl officially joins the Allen Institute in August.