Growing up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, surrounded by a family of bookkeepers and accountants, Jana Eggers never could have predicted her future role as a thought leader in the world of Artificial Intelligence. “I was sent to school to become an accountant or a lawyer,” she explained, “and much to my family’s surprise and somewhat chagrin, I became a mathematician!” As a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science at Hendrix College, she was given the opportunity to work on a National Science Foundation study on supercomputing, where she was able to dig into computational science, relying on nascent artificial intelligence to perform high-speed parallel computing. This early exposure to AI set the stage for a career that would take Eggers in unexpected and groundbreaking directions.
After graduation, Eggers began working for Los Alamos National Laboratory. At Los Alamos she was “looking for plastics that conduct [electricity] as well as metals.” One of those projects included investigating active camouflage for the military, to see if it would be possible to paint a tank a particular color and then run an electrical current through the surface to have it change color. Her family, who up until that point was concerned about how a mathematical scientist would support herself, breathed a sigh of relief.
She loved the applied nature of her work at Los Alamos, and this eventually led her to a series of impressive jobs with a supply chain optimization company, early search engine start-ups, launching the logistics division of American Airlines in Europe, and the creation of a corporate innovation lab for Intuit. The common thread through each of these positions? Her continued use of what she calls “bleeding edge technologies” such as natural language processing, to get better, faster results to customers, regardless of the applied market or industry.
These days, Eggers is the CEO of Nara Logics, where she is focused on making high-quality artificial intelligence tools used by a wide variety of companies, aimed at helping those companies better serve their customers. In this role, she views herself as a translator: someone who can “speak the language” of both business and tech, and translate concepts between industries. She describes herself as an AI practitioner, differentiated from an AI researcher; and she is passionate about the importance of making AI accessible to companies, so they can better understand both the potential and pitfalls of those tools.
Eggers says she’s excited in particular by her work with defense and intelligence organizations, as she sees a real need for tech people to help guide the ways AI tools are deployed by governments, especially as a way to uncover diplomatic solutions to international conflict. She is also dedicated to her work in healthcare optimization, contributing to better patient outcomes and lower healthcare costs. For example, Nara Logics created a tool that helps veterinarians make clinical decisions when faced with complex, multi-disease cases. Eggers relayed, “The vets would say to us, ‘Hey, I’m coming out of a surgery at midnight. My ability to figure out, what’s the amount of this [drug] that they need…And how should I mix it? [And factor in] the weight of the dog and the prior condition that they have…Now I can just go to this tool and say, Hey, here’s the case, and it gives me a course of action. And I’m gonna check it as a professional….[but it’s] helping me think differently”. As Eggers continues to push the boundaries of AI, her commitment to ethical deployment remains a driving force in her work.
When asked what advice she might give to young people interested in working with emerging technologies, Eggers replied, “Go where your passions lie!” adding that “there’s a lot more breadth [of future careers] where your passions lie than what people around you might know about”. She explained the need for all kinds of people to be thinking critically about artificial intelligence, whether they be scientists, engineers, storytellers or artists. “Look at what else is happening in the studies of ethics and AI, and bias and AI; there’s a lot of needs for humanities and liberal arts approaches that are going to have a good impact and a necessary impact on AI.” She went on to say that the only way to reduce the potential harms of AI is for everyone to actively use, understand, and critique AI, and to push companies to do better. This vision of AI’s future highlights the importance of diverse perspectives to shape the technology’s trajectory.
Eggers will be delivering the keynote address for the Flagstaff Festival of Science on Friday, September 20 at 7:00 PM in Ardrey Auditorium at Northern Arizona University titled Artificial Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful. She will talk about the challenges and promises that AI tools hold for society in an introductory and engaging way, and address some of the fears and worries that people have regarding the use of AI. “Come prepared with questions!” Eggers requests – “I love an interactive forum and there are no silly questions. I’d love to hear what [attendees] are thinking and give them my take on it.” Please reserve your free tickets online in advance of the presentation – we hope to see you there!
Board member, Adam Marsh, and lead paleontologist at Petrified National Forest, works with a team of scientists to uncover an approximately 300 million-year-old fossil skeleton discovered at Canyonlands National Park in Utah (June 2024)