Randall Davis received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, and received a PhD from Stanford in artificial intelligence in 1976. He has served as Associate Director of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (1993-1998), as a Research Director of CSAIL (2003-2007), and as Associate Director of CSAIL (2012-2014). 

Davis has been a seminal contributor to the fields of knowledge-based systems and human-computer interaction. He and his research group are developing advanced tools that permit natural multimodal interaction with computers by creating software that understands users as they sketch, gesture, and talk. He is a published author and has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the US Air Force.