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Rama Akkiraju

Vice president of AI for IT, NVIDIA

Rama Akkiraju is a vice president of AI for IT at NVIDIA. Akkiraju previously spent more than two decades at IBM, most recently as an IBM Fellow, Master Inventor and IBM Academy member, and as CTO of the IBM Watson AI Operations product, which applied AI to IT operations management. Earlier at IBM, Akkiraju led the team that built Watson services such as Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer, Emotion Analysis and Sentiment Analysis, and led work to scale Watson's speech recognition, language understanding and chatbot services to many languages. At IBM's Watson and Almaden research centers, Akkiraju led projects on agent-based decision support, business process management, electronic marketplaces and semantic Web services, including a W3C standard.1

At a glance

Current role
Vice president of AI for IT
Company
NVIDIA
Sector
Company
Work listed
2
Honors
4
Sources cited
2
Profile reviewed

Career

Rama Akkiraju spent more than two decades at IBM. At the IBM Watson and Almaden research centers, Akkiraju led projects and research teams on agent-based decision support systems, business process management, electronic marketplaces and semantic Web services, including leading work on a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard.1

Akkiraju later led IBM Watson's work on natural, personalized conversations between computers and people, where the team built the Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer, Emotion Analysis and Sentiment Analysis services, and led the effort to scale Watson's speech recognition, language understanding and chatbot services to dozens of languages. Akkiraju then became an IBM Fellow, Master Inventor and IBM Academy member and served as CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations, a product applying AI to IT operations management.1

Akkiraju is now a vice president of AI for IT at NVIDIA and was listed among the speakers for NVIDIA GTC 2026 as VP of AI/ML for IT.12

Professional service

Akkiraju served as the 2018 president of ISSIP, a professional society for service science, and continues on its strategy committee. Akkiraju has received four best paper awards in AI and operations research, according to the NVIDIA biography.1

Work and contributions

  • IBM Watson AI services Proprietary product

    Led the IBM team that developed Watson services including Personality Insights, Tone Analyzer, Emotion Analysis and Sentiment Analysis, and led efforts to scale Watson's speech recognition, natural language understanding and chatbot services to many languages.1

  • IBM Watson AI Operations Proprietary product

    Served as CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations, a product for optimizing IT operations management with AI.1

Timeline

  1. Served as president of ISSIP, a professional society for service science.1
  2. Received UC Berkeley's Athena award for Technical and Executive Leadership.1
  3. Named USA Industry Innovator of the Year by the Women in AI organization.1
  4. Listed as a speaker at NVIDIA GTC 2026 as VP of AI/ML for IT at NVIDIA.2

Other documented roles

Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.

  • IBM Fellow, Master Inventor, and CTO of IBM Watson AI Operations, IBM1

Honors and recognition

  • IBM Fellow · IBM1
  • Athena Award for Technical and Executive Leadership · University of California, Berkeley, 20201
  • USA Industry Innovator of the Year · Women in AI, 20221
  • AI Industry Leader of the Year · Women Leaders in Data & AI (WLDA), 20221

Where they work

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References

2 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026

  1. Rama Akkiraju — NVIDIA ResearchNVIDIA Research · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  2. NVIDIA GTC San Jose 2026 — SpeakersNVIDIA · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026