Erik Thomsen

Erik is a world authority in the field of multidimensional information systems, an internationally recognized expert in the application of logic to information systems, and a well-known innovator in ontologically grounded approaches to AI and socio-economic-environmental (or ESG) applications. As CTO of Blender Logic, he designed a semantic controller that improves the performance of machine learning applications that was selected as an exemplar of advanced AI algorithms by the DoD's Joint Center for AI (JAIC). Recently, Blender Logic teamed with sciGaia, a Montana-based provider of sustainability services, in order to produce a new generation of wellbeing-based planning systems. He is the author of "OLAP Solutions: Building Multidimensional Information Systems," which is used around the world in both graduate computer science and MBA programs, and of publications for both scholarly and IT journals.

Erik works at the junction of sustainability, AI, and multidimensional information systems where he is a recognized world authority. He helps companies and governments fuse multi-scale environmental, social, and economic data into actionable measures of wellbeing and economic value; and has pioneered new and practical methods for calculating and pricing company’s environmental and social impacts in ways that can be integrated with traditional financials whether for internal capital budgeting or external portfolio analysis.

As a member of the Expert Group in an Egyptian effort to spearhead a new generation of wellbeing indicators, he developed a method accepted by both economists and ecologists for deciding the conditions under which real environmental and human indicators could be translated into financial terms. As aggregation expert for the World Bank, he developed their Earth Summit environment model, their human well-being model for their 50th anniversary Board meeting and the logic for how they calculate multi-level representations of worldwide data both real and financial. As an original member of GRI’s Tech Council he demonstrated the constraints on wellbeing indicators that need to be met to integrate with financial charts of account. As Distinguished Scientist at Hyperion Solutions, he designed accounting software that could integrate real and financial indicators. He has been a Principal Investigator on several multimillion-dollar government-sponsored AI projects; as CTO of Blender Logic, he designed a semantic controller to improve the performance of machine learning that was selected by the U.S. government as an exemplar of advanced AI algorithms. He has been awarded market-defining patents in information complexity and semantics.