Dr. Heather Ames Versace is Neurala’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. As COO, she contributes diverse executive skills ranging from oversight of multi-million dollar applied research initiatives, strategic planning, product management, and leading translation of research into commercial products. Versace has spoken at TechCrunch and Forrester and was honored at the Google headquarters as being one of the Top 10 Women in Cloud emerging technology. Heather has served as the Executive Director of the NSF-sponsored CELEST Science of Learning Center at Boston University. She holds a PhD in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University and a BS in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, making her one of the few C-level executives in artificial intelligence with a technical degree.