Initially launched in early 2025, Cognite’s Fellows Program is a prestigious initiative that recognizes and elevates Cognite’s foremost technical experts in industrial AI and Data. It honors high-impact individuals from around the organization who bridge the gap between complex industrial domains and cutting-edge software engineering, and have proven personal impact and contribution to Cognite’s MoonShot mission: $100B in customer value delivered by 2035. Many consider it the ultimate "inner circle" of innovators who are not just experts in Cognite’s technology, but are actively defining the future of how heavy industries like energy and manufacturing operate in a data-driven world.
For technology companies in fast-moving markets, a technical fellows program serves as the intellectual backbone that fosters room to reimagine the art of the possible and bring innovative ideas to life. Ultimately, a fellows program ensures that the organization’s most critical technical decisions are guided by long-term vision rather than short-term convenience, creating a sustainable competitive edge.
For executives and digital transformation leaders evaluating AI partners, the Fellows Program signals something important: Cognite is not just about building software. It's about leveraging the rare human expertise needed to make industrial AI work at scale, in the real world, where production uptime, safety incidents, and energy efficiency are high stakes.
So who are the Cognite Fellows?
Now in its second year, Cognite is proud to have six Cognite fellows, representing various technical and customer-facing disciplines. Cognite Fellows must demonstrate the ability to anticipate future trends to develop impactful solutions, while being a personification of Cognite values, earning high regard across the company.
- Torgrim Aas combines deep industrial domain experience with edge-to-cloud industrial data expertise. He has led Cognite's most challenging customer projects, showcasing exceptional technical depth and creativity, leading to significant measurable business results.
- Jan Eivind Danielsen has a unique understanding of the industrial value chain, from capital projects to operations. Combined with his thought leadership, he has extended the use of Cognite technologies across the end-to-end industrial value chain, establishing a new industry standard.
- Thorkild Stray has brought over two decades of experience from a variety of large-scale, real-time distributed software systems into asset-intensive industry, with a unique grit to make it work in mission-critical. environments, while inspiring and mentoring colleagues and customers.
- Jan Inge Bergseth has been instrumental in refining how complex asset hierarchies are contextualized at scale. His work ensures that large-scale enterprises can maintain a "digital twin" that remains accurate and high-performing across global operations.
- Aleksandra Knödlseder has distinguished herself through her leadership in applying AI to Reliability and Maintenance (R&M), including the development of AI agents for reliability such as RCA AI Agents. Her expertise in translating complex business challenges into scalable data models and trustworthy AI solutions enables customers to accelerate their journey toward autonomous operations.
- Jason Schern has been working with some of the largest manufacturing companies worldwide to dramatically improve their data operations, machine learning analytics, and use of industrial AI to improve business outcomes. As Cognite Field CTO, he is passionate about the value and impact of trusted, accessible contextualized industrial data at scale and removing the complexity of industrial data.
What are their key responsibilities?
While being named a Cognite Fellow is a recognition of past achievement, it also comes with a significant mandate for the future. Fellows are expected to be "force multipliers" - individuals whose influence extends far beyond their immediate team with responsibilities generally falling into three key pillars:
1. Technical Leadership & Innovation
Fellows are the architects of the "impossible." They are responsible for pushing the boundaries of Cognite technology. Whether it’s developing new ways to contextualize unstructured data or architecting low-code AI agents for the field, they ensure Cognite stays at the cutting edge of the industrial tech stack.
2. Strategic Mentorship
A primary responsibility of a Fellow is to "lift as they climb." They serve as mentors to both internal Cognite teams and to the customers they serve. By guiding the next generation of software engineers and data scientists, they ensure that the company’s culture of excellence is sustainable. They don't just solve problems; they teach others how to think about industrial data at scale.
3. Anticipating Future Trends
In industry, a technology that works today might be obsolete in five years. Fellows are tasked with looking over the horizon. They must demonstrate a unique ability to anticipate future market shifts - such as the rise of Agentic AI - and translate those trends into impactful solutions for customers.
So what does this look like in practice?
Cognite Fellows typically spend their time closest to the most challenging technical and customer-facing problems. From spending time in the field finding creative AI and data solutions for complex use cases, to brainstorming how innovation in LLMs can be best applied to industry, every day is different than the last.
See for example, how Jan Eivind spends his days:
Operating at the intersection of strategy, technology, and industry offers unique opportunities to develop ideas that can revolutionize the future, such as Jan Eivind’s take on the Autonomous Industrial Enterprise.
Why is this program so important?
Heavy industries like energy and manufacturing have been notoriously difficult to digitize. Unlike a typical tech startup, where data is clean and digital-native, industrial data is "messy." It lives in legacy sensors, paper blueprints, and isolated IT silos and can require tremendous domain expertise in order to make it useful and valuable.
The Cognite Fellows Program acts as the bridge between raw industrial complexity and actionable AI solutions so that industry can evolve and solve their most challenging problems.
- Accelerating the Energy Transition: The world is moving toward greener energy, but this requires massive operational efficiency. Fellows lead the charge in using AI to optimize production and reduce waste.
- Building Institutional Knowledge: While AI models are powerful, they lack the decades of "boots-on-the-ground" experience that human experts possess. The program formalizes this "know-how," ensuring that deep domain expertise is baked into the software Cognite builds.
- Setting the Industry Standard: By establishing a community of top-tier experts, Cognite isn't just selling a product; they are shaping the global conversation on how responsible, scalable industrialization should look in the 21st century.
At its core, the Fellows Program is a reflection of Cognite’s values: Impact, Ownership, and Relentlessness. It recognizes that while software is the tool, people are the engine of change. By celebrating individuals who embody deep technical knowledge and creative problem-solving, Cognite is building a community of experts dedicated to making industry safer, more profitable, and fundamentally more sustainable for the generations to come.
Whether you are a customer looking for the most reliable AI partner or a developer seeking a place to make a global impact, the Cognite Fellows Program stands as a testament to what is possible when human brilliance meets industrial-scale data.