Moriba Jah
Decision Intelligence & Responsible AI Expert; MacArthur Fellow; Co-Founder, President & Chief Scientist of GaiaVerse; Space Sustainability Pioneer
Moriba Jah
Decision Intelligence & Responsible AI Expert; MacArthur Fellow; Co-Founder, President & Chief Scientist of GaiaVerse; Space Sustainability Pioneer
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Biography
Dr. Moriba Kemessia Jah helps leaders make better decisions when information is incomplete, systems are interconnected, and the stakes are high. A MacArthur Fellow, astrodynamicist, and leading voice in decision intelligence and responsible AI, he translates advances in agentic AI, mathematics, and systems thinking into practical guidance for executives navigating disruption, risk, and rapid technological change.
Dr. Jah is a full professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he leads the Jah Decision Intelligence Group. His research spans artificial intelligence and machine learning, human-AI interaction, multisource data fusion, and uncertainty quantification. Before joining UT Austin, he worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory and served as a spacecraft navigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on multiple Mars missions. These experiences taught him to make consequential decisions with imperfect data, challenge assumptions before they become failures, and recognize how choices can produce cascading effects across an interconnected system.
As co-founder, president, and chief scientist of GaiaVerse, Dr. Jah develops AI-powered decision intelligence that helps leaders understand complex systems and act with greater clarity. GaiaVerse combines knowledge graphs with custom reasoning agents to connect fragmented information, identify hidden dependencies, model potential outcomes, and translate data into actionable insights. Its approach brings together artificial intelligence, human judgment, and traditional ecological knowledge to develop a fuller understanding of complex challenges.
Dr. Jah also developed the Theory of Epistemic Abductive Geometry, or TEAG, a mathematical framework for reasoning with incomplete, fragmented, or contradictory evidence. It offers a way to distinguish between what the available evidence supports and what remains unknown. This work advances a business-critical question: How can organizations benefit from AI’s speed and capabilities without surrendering human judgment, responsibility, or accountability?
A firm advocate for AI literacy, Dr. Jah believes leaders must understand both the capabilities and limitations of the systems they deploy. AI can surface valuable insights and expand an organization’s capacity, but it can also be confidently wrong, reinforce flawed assumptions, and scale weak decisions. He equips audiences to ask better questions of AI, recognize uncertainty, test outputs against evidence, and establish safeguards appropriate to the level of risk.
This work is being put into practice through GaiaVerse’s partnership with Findhelp. GaiaVerse is applying agentic AI and graph technology to more than a decade of anonymized social care search data to uncover emerging needs, identify potential crises earlier, and support more effective resource allocation while protecting individual privacy. The initiative illustrates a principle that applies across industries: AI creates its greatest value when it helps people see hidden connections, anticipate consequences, and act sooner.
Space has served as Dr. Jah’s ultimate proving ground for these ideas. As co-founder and chief scientist of Privateer Space, alongside Steve Wozniak, he helps develop technologies that improve visibility into orbital traffic and debris. Satellite infrastructure supports financial transactions, navigation, communications, weather forecasting, agriculture, logistics, and global supply chains. Dr. Jah demonstrates why resilience, sustainability, and responsible innovation are operating requirements for any organization that depends on shared infrastructure.
Dr. Jah’s personal journey from profound trauma to internationally recognized scientist and leader also shapes his approach to courage and resilience. He defines courage as “the absence of paralysis in the presence of fear.” For leaders facing disruption or transformation, his message is candid and actionable: Fear may be unavoidable, but it does not have to prevent meaningful action.
Dr. Jah has addressed audiences at TED, TEDx, NATO, the U.S. Congress, and major international conferences. He is a TED Fellow, an international member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. His work has been featured by National Geographic, TIME, Wired, BBC, and other leading media outlets.
Known for making complex ideas accessible and relevant, Dr. Jah gives audiences a clearer way to navigate uncertainty, use AI responsibly, manage interconnected risk, and make decisions that strengthen both organizational performance and trust.
Speaker Videos
Moriba Jah's Hot Takes on Astrodynamics, Spirituality, and Leadership
Moriba Jah Describes the Moment That Changed His Life | The Businessweek Show
The world's first crowdsourced space traffic monitoring system | Moriba Jah
ITU INTERVIEWS @ ITU AI for Good Global Summit: Moriba Jah, Founder, Privateer Space
PRIVATEER SPACE: The Future of Space for the Future of Us with Dr. Moriba Jah
Space environmentalist Dr. Moriba Jah at the College of the Atlantic Summer Institute
Moriba Jah
TEXAS IN DEPTH: Moriba Jah on Space Junk and Spirituality
Decluttering space: Meet Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist
Moriba Jah, Astrodynamicist | 2022 MacArthur Fellow
Space Junk, StarLink and Falling Rockets with Moriba Jah – Cosmic Queries
Speech Topics
AI Literacy for Leaders: Using AI Without Surrendering Judgment
AI can accelerate analysis, automate complex work, and reveal valuable patterns. It can also be confidently wrong, reproduce blind spots, and scale weak decisions. As organizations move from generative AI to increasingly autonomous agentic systems, leaders must understand not only what these tools can do, but also when they should not be trusted. Dr. Moriba Jah offers an accessible approach to responsible AI adoption that replaces hype and fear with informed judgment.
Audiences will leave with:
A clearer understanding of what AI can and cannot reliably do
Critical questions to ask before trusting AI-generated recommendations
Principles for balancing speed and autonomy with human oversight and accountability
Decision Intelligence: Leading Through Complexity in an Age of AI
Leaders rarely have perfect information. Data is siloed, signals conflict, conditions change, and decisions in one area can produce unexpected consequences elsewhere. Drawing on his work navigating spacecraft and developing GaiaVerse’s AI decision intelligence platform, Dr. Moriba Jah demonstrates how leaders can connect information and make stronger decisions without waiting for absolute certainty. His approach combines data, agentic AI, human insight, and traditional ecological knowledge to help organizations understand complex challenges from multiple perspectives.
Audiences will leave with:
A practical approach to making decisions with incomplete information
Ways to identify hidden dependencies and second-order consequences
A more proactive mindset for anticipating risk, opportunity, and change
Courage Is the Absence of Paralysis: Leading Through Fear and Uncertainty
Fear is not always a sign that leaders should stop. Often, it is evidence that the decision matters. Drawing from personal adversity and a career built around high-stakes challenges, Dr. Moriba Jah explores what prevents people from acting when the risks feel overwhelming. He distinguishes thoughtful caution from paralysis and shows how leaders can create the clarity, trust, and psychological safety teams need to move forward during disruption and transformation.
Audiences will leave with:
A clearer distinction between thoughtful caution and paralysis
A mindset for taking responsible action without perfect certainty
Principles for building trust and psychological safety during change
Healing the World Through Healing Ourselves: Leadership Lessons From Trauma & Resilience
Trauma is not always an individual experience. It can influence teams, communities, and entire organizations. Drawing from his journey through profound personal trauma, Dr. Moriba Jah connects personal healing with authentic, compassionate leadership. He examines how self-awareness, emotional resilience, empathy, and accountability help leaders respond more effectively under pressure and create cultures where people can adapt, contribute, and move forward together.
Audiences will leave with:
Greater awareness of how personal and collective experiences affect leadership
Strategies for responding rather than reacting under pressure
Principles for creating adaptable, compassionate, and trust-based teams
The Unseen Web: Managing Risk in an Interconnected World
Financial transactions, delivery routes, communications, and supply chains all depend on networks that are largely invisible until something fails. Dr. Moriba Jah reveals how satellites, data systems, global logistics, and AI-powered infrastructure connect the modern economy. Using risks such as orbital debris and cyber threats, he demonstrates how disruption in one network can cascade across industries, markets, and communities.
Audiences will leave with:
A systems-level view of organizational risk and resilience
A framework for identifying hidden dependencies and potential points of failure
A stronger understanding of how foresight, redundancy, and collaboration protect operations
The Final Frontier or Final Folly? Why Space Sustainability Is Business Sustainability
Satellites support navigation, climate monitoring, financial timing, telecommunications, agriculture, global security, and supply chains. As commercial launches increase, orbital congestion and debris threaten infrastructure on which nearly every modern business depends. Dr. Moriba Jah introduces celestial stewardship, a framework for protecting space as a shared environment while supporting responsible private-sector growth. He explores how AI, data science, traditional ecological knowledge, and global cooperation can support innovation without repeating the environmental mistakes made on Earth.
Audiences will leave with:
A clearer understanding of how businesses depend on space infrastructure
Insight into the operational and economic risks created by orbital debris
A model for balancing innovation, sustainability, and responsible stewardship
Testimonials
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