David Siegel

David Mark Siegel (born 1961) is an American computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He co-founded Two Sigma, where he currently serves as co-chairman. Siegel has written for Business Insider, The New York Times, Financial Times and similar publications on topics including machine learning, the future of work, and the impact of algorithms used by search and social media companies. Early life and education Siegel was born in 1961 and spent his early childhood in the Bronx, New York and focused on computer science at a young age. By 12 years old, he had built memory and logic boards and learned to program a supercomputer at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. As a freshman in high school, he taught a programming course to high school students at an NYU summer program. After attending Mamaroneck High School, Siegel graduated from Princeton University with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science and he went on to receive a PhD in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he conducted research at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and developed thermal and tactile sensors for the Utah-MIT dexterous four-fingered hand, as well as a computational architecture for controlling the system. Career After leaving MIT, Siegel worked alongside Jeff Bezos at D.E. Shaw & Co and became the company's first Chief Information Officer. During this time he founded FarSight Financial Services, the first integrated personal financial services website. FarSight performed the first retail stock trade on the Internet and was acquired by Merrill Lynch. He later served as Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director at Tudor Investment Corporation. In 1999, Siegel founded Blink.com, a web-based browser bookmark storage, organization, and sharing service that automatically searched for new sites related to users' existing bookmarks. Blink was later sold to the Vendare Group.