Alumni profile: Chih-Han Yu, Ph.D. '10

As founder and CEO of Appier, a company that uses artificial intelligence to help businesses solve problems, Chih-Han Yu, Ph.D. '10, is immersed in the latest technological trends. But for Yu, who knew nothing about computers during his youth in Taiwan, the journey to becoming a tech-savvy innovator was nearly derailed before it began. While he decided to follow his father's advice and study computer science in college, he didn't enjoy the classes and nearly abandoned the field completely. It wasn't until his junior year, when he took an artificial intelligence class, that Yu became captivated by the seemingly endless potential of computers. His desire to build a program to recognize human faces soon bordered on an obsession, he said.