The Carnegie Bosch Institute (CBI) is a unique alliance between Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a world-class academic institution, and the Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of advanced technology and services. Established in 1990 through a significant endowment from Bosch, the core mission of CBI is to leverage the complementary advantages of academia and industry through extensive collaboration. CBI’s efforts are aligned with the excellence of CMU’s research competencies at the intersection of business and technology, with a focus on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and privacy, and sustainability. Activities at CMU include funding for faculty, staff, and students conducting breakthrough research, the prestigious Carnegie Bosch Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, and ongoing support for Carnegie Bosch Chaired Professorships.

CBI history

Carnegie Bosch Institute has a long, rich history.

Leadership

Alessandro Oltramari pointing at a white board

Source: Carnegie Bosch Institute

General direction and activities of the institute are guided by the institute’s governing board. The governing board has members from both industry and university, including leadership-level representatives from both Carnegie Mellon and the Bosch Group.

The CBI president leads the institute and is responsible for the overall management, portfolio, and operations. The current CBI president is Alessandro Oltramari, who was appointed in 2024.

Alessandro Oltramari is president of the Carnegie Bosch Institute and a senior research scientist at Bosch Research Technology Center in Pittsburgh (USA). As an industry mentor at CBI for two years, Oltramari has dedicated himself to helping to shape the CBI fellowship program and continues to serve as a guide and mentor to the first cohort of CBI fellows.

Oltramari joined Bosch Research in 2016, after working as a research associate at Carnegie Mellon University, funded by public agencies like DARPA, NSF, ARL. At Bosch Research, he focuses on neuro-symbolic AI. His primary interest is to investigate how knowledge systems can be integrated with learning algorithms, and help humans and machines make sense of the physical and digital worlds. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Trento (Italy). He had a ten-year tenure at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), where he maintains an associate researcher position. He spent two semesters at Princeton University in 2005 and 2006 as a visiting scholar. His research record lists about 100 publications. He received the Army Research Lab's Above and Beyond award, received multiple best paper awards and has been featured in major news media outlets such as CNET and The New Scientist.