Fred Popowich received his PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1989, and since then has been a faculty member in the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University,At SFU, he is also an Associate Member of the Department of Linguistics, and an Associate Member (and past director) of the Cognitive Science Program.  At Dalhousie University, he is an Adjunct of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

He is an active in technology commercialization,  and was co-founder, president, COO and then CTO of Axonwave Software. He is currently the Scientific Director of SFU’s Big Data Initiative.