Daphne Koller

While most teens were prepping for prom, she was finishing her master’s degree.

At 17, Daphne Koller earned her bachelor’s degree.

By 18, her master’s.

And by 25, she had a PhD from Stanford and was working alongside legends like Stuart Russell and Joseph Halpern.

But that was just the beginning.

In 2012, Daphne co-founded Coursera, the platform that made Ivy League lectures free and accessible to over 100 million learners.

While others clung to the ivory tower, she broke the gates wide open.

She didn’t stop there.

In 2016, she left Coursera and joined Calico, the Google-backed longevity company, as chief computing officer.

Two years later, she launched insitro.

A startup using machine learning and genomics to discover new drugs.

Her team builds robotic labs that generate massive biological datasets, then trains AI models to predict which treatments will work.

Faster trials.

Fewer failures.

Better outcomes.

She’s published 300+ papers in Science, Cell, and NeurIPS, with an h-index over 150.

The recognition followed: MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Presidential Early Career Award, Member of the National Academy of Engineering, Arts & Sciences, AND Sciences, ACM Prize in Computing, and TIME’s 100 Most Influential in AI (2024).

Oh and in 2020, she also co-founded Engageli, a next-gen virtual classroom platform designed to fix everything Zoom got wrong about online learning.