Itamar Arel Male • United States of America

Itamar Arel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and technology executive recognized for his work in machine intelligence and conversational AI. He earned his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, as well as an M.B.A. from the same institution. His professional efforts have focused on applying artificial intelligence to financial analytics and voice-based customer interactions. Through a combination of academic research and business leadership, he has contributed to the practical integration of AI systems into commercial environments.

Dr. Itamar Arel completed his Bachelor of Science degree in 1995 and his Master of Science in 1998 at Ben Gurion University of the Negev under the supervision of Professor Dan Sadot. He later earned a Master of Business Administration in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2003, again under Professor Sadot. During his doctoral studies, he received the 1999 Intel Scholarship for Excellence in Doctoral Studies in recognition of his early contributions to machine intelligence and high-performance computing.

Arel served as a research assistant in the Optical Communication Laboratory at Ben Gurion University while pursuing his graduate education. After graduation, he worked as an engineering officer on active duty in the Israel Defense Forces from 1995 to 2000, strengthening both his technical expertise and leadership capabilities.

In 2003, he moved to the United States to join the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He advanced within academia, earning tenure and becoming a full professor by 2009.

Itamar founded and directed the Machine Intelligence Lab in Tennessee, where he focused on machine learning and reinforcement learning research. His academic work emphasized adaptive computational models to enhance the performance of intelligent systems operating in complex, changing environments.

Between January 2014 and July 2015, he took a sabbatical to serve as a visiting associate professor in Stanford University’s Computer Science Department. During this period, he collaborated with faculty members and graduate students on research in machine intelligence and advanced learning architectures.

Arel has secured multiple patents, including innovations in high-speed traffic simulation and reinforcement learning architectures. In 2004, he received the U.S. Department of Energy CAREER Award for Young Investigators, acknowledging his contributions and promise in computational science.

Alongside his academic responsibilities, he pursued entrepreneurial ventures in artificial intelligence and technology. He co-founded and served as Chief Scientist at TeraCross, Inc. in Campbell, California, joining in February 2000 while completing his Ph.D. From 2008 to 2015, he co-founded Binatix Labs in Palo Alto, California, serving as Chief Technology Officer and applying proprietary machine learning techniques to financial data analytics, including market prediction, risk analysis, and automated decision-making.

Itamar founded Apprente in June 2017 to develop voice technology systems that automate customer interactions in operational settings. The company specializes in conversational AI solutions for the food and service industries, using deep learning, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning to enable voice-based ordering and related services.

He led Apprente's acquisition by McDonald’s in October 2019 and subsequently transitioned into the role of Corporate Vice President within McD Tech Labs, where he oversaw the deployment of applied voice AI systems. In April 2022, he co-founded Tenyx, Inc. and served as its CEO, focusing on AI-driven voice agents for customer service. He later led Tenyx's acquisition by Salesforce in September 2024, after which he became Vice President of Voice AI Solutions at Salesforce.

Before joining Salesforce full-time, he served as a strategic advisor to IBM Watson Orders in Mountain View, California, from January to March 2022. Throughout his professional journey in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Itamar Arel has remained engaged in research and innovation, holding patents for hierarchical machine learning systems for lifelong learning, confidence-based reinforcement learning, and synthetic-data-trained conversational pipelines. He has also participated in DARPA’s UPSIDE program and maintains senior memberships in IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and the BICA Society.