"Maya Ackerman is a rare phenomenon, a renaissance person who is equally at ease singing operatic arias as putting to use the latest artificial intelligence methodologies.

Last autumn Maya was a guest speaker in our computer science colloquium. In more than thirty years running our colloquium had dealt with every aspect of computing.

Except Maya's. She kept our rapt audience of sixty, mostly computer science students and professionals, deeply engaged. My colleagues and I are happy to have enjoyed such an extraordinary presentation and wish Maya the success she deserves."

- Sonoma State University

"Dr. Ackerman started her presentation by singing, which definitely set the tone of the rest of the presentation. The rest of her presentation on computational creativity was definitely eye-opening; it was one of the most interesting we've seen last year and my personal favourite. Music and computational methods are not two areas that go together naturally, but she's managed to blend them both into one cohesive topic. Her passion in both areas made her talk thoroughly engaging while her expertise made it remarkably informative."

- Ericsson Research Silicon Valley

"I was introduced to the work of Maya Ackerman in 2017 when she spoke and performed at a large event organized by San Jose State University. I later invited her to speak at Stanford in October 2017 as part of the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous and then as a keynote speaker at the Life Art Science Tech (LAST) festival, both series that i founded and still chair. She spoke about computational creativity, a topic that straddles Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience, Art and Music. Maya is a stellar speaker who has the rare skill of combining insights on state-of-the art research and multisensory historical surveys. It helps that she was trained to sing opera. Both these talks have been ranked by the audience as among the best of those multi-year series"

- LASER and LAST Festival

"Her talk about two song-writing machines, ALYSIA and MARBLE, was really inspiring. Her knowledge of the topic and her really friendly personality made very easy to those without computer background to follow the talk; definitely, she connected very well with our students and faculty members. She also run a workshop/tutorial where the attendees could experience, first-hand, what it was to collaborate with a machine in order to generate a new melody. Amazing experience!"

- Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana at Cuajimalpa, México City

"Maya is an outstanding and captivating speaker. Her work is mind-blowing and the way she communicates it gets people ecstatic about our future."

- Worlds Fair Nano

"Not only were they privileged enough to hear about the writing, but Dr. Ackerman came with a lesson prepared to connect the experience of the Holocaust with current-day bullying. With an event that took place before their time, this connection made it much more personal for them. If anyone has the opportunity for a presentation like this, I highly recommend it!"

- Sarah Brown, Educator

"It was my pleasure and honor to hear Maya Ackerman’s outstanding presentation titled Faith and Hope After the Holocaust. Maya’s presentation covered the unique perspectives of some survivors of the Nazi holocaust. How is religious faith changed by this experience? The most moving part of Maya’s presentation is when she invited people to read selections from holocaust survivors on how they were affected. Maya’s presentation also covered how her grandfather, a holocaust survivor, had the resilience to survive and retain a positive outlook on life. I talked to many people after the presentation, the praise I heard was unanimous, that it was a powerful and moving presentation."

- Technology Librarian