Itamar Arel
Computer Scientist - Machine Intelligence and Conversational AI
Itamar Arel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and technology executive whose work centers on 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 focus has been the application of artificial intelligence to financial analytics and voice-based customer interactions. By combining academic research with business leadership, he has helped bring advanced AI solutions into practical use across multiple industries.
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 research in machine intelligence and high-performance computing.
Arel served as a research assistant in the Optical Communication Laboratory at Ben Gurion University while completing his graduate education. After graduation, he worked as an engineering officer on active duty in the Israel Defense Forces from 1995 to 2000, where he developed leadership skills alongside technical expertise.
In 2003, he relocated 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 progressed through the academic ranks, earning tenure and becoming a full professor by 2009.
Itamar founded and directed the Machine Intelligence Lab in Tennessee, concentrating on machine learning and reinforcement learning research. His academic contributions focused on adaptive computational systems designed to enhance intelligent decision-making in complex 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 time, he collaborated with faculty and graduate students on research involving 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 was awarded the U.S. Department of Energy CAREER Award for Young Investigators, recognizing his contributions and potential in computational science.
Alongside his academic responsibilities, he pursued entrepreneurial initiatives 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 focused on conversational AI solutions for the food and service industries, leveraging deep learning, natural language understanding, 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 career in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Itamar Arel has remained committed to 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.
Learn more: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-the-far-left-and-far-right-meet-over-the-jews
