Leader of the team that developed IBM's Watson computer system, Ferrucci served as the principal investigator who in 2007–2011 led a team of 25 IBM and academic researchers and engineers to create an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. The Watson computer system represents the integration and advancement of many search, natural language processing, and semantic technologies. Watson was developed in IBM's DeepQA project and was named after IBM's first CEO and industrialist Thomas J. Watson.
The computer system was specifically developed to answer questions on the Jeopardy! quiz show. In 2011, Watson competed on Jeopardy! against former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings and received the first prize of $1 million. Following the Jeopardy! challenge, he and his team planned to apply DeepQA technologies to areas like medicine, government, and law to drive advances in computer supported intelligence and decision-making.
Ferrucci graduated from Manhattan College with a B.S. degree in Biology and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994 with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science specializing in knowledge representation and reasoning. He joined IBM's Thomas J. Watson in 1995, and in 2012 he left to join giant hedge fund company Bridgewater Associates, where he saw a similar path to modeling the economy and markets. He wrote in an email, "Their approach to investment is based on a fundamental understanding of how the global 'economic machine' works."
