Kenneth M. Ford

Ken Ford is founder and director of the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC).

Kenneth Ford is Founder and CEO of the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) — a not-for-profit research institute located in Pensacola, Florida. IHMC has grown into one of the nation’s premier research organizations with world-class scientists and engineers investigating a broad range of topics related to building technological systems aimed at amplifying and extending human cognitive and perceptual capacities. Richard Florida has described IHMC as “a new model for interdisciplinary research institutes that strive to be both entrepreneurial and academic, firmly grounded and inspiringly ambitious.” IHMC headquarters are in Pensacola and a branch research facility will soon open in Ocala, Florida.

Dr. Ford is the author or coauthor of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. Ford's research interests include: artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human-centered computing, and entrepreneurship in government and academia. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University. He is Emeritus Editor-in-Chief of AAAI/MIT Press and has been involved in the editing of several journals. Dr. Ford is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a member of the IEEE Computer Society, and a member of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Ford has received many awards and honors including the Honoris Causas from the University of Bordeaux in 2005 and the 2008 Robert S. Englemore Memorial Award for his work in artificial intelligence (AI).