Sam Rusk: 2026 Early Career Award recipient

BSCMPE ’14
Co-founder and chief artificial intelligence officer, EnsoData

A computer engineer whose technical and entrepreneurial leadership in advancing artificial intelligence technologies improve medical data analysis and support more effective patient care.

Most college graduates are content to ease into the workforce with an entry-level job. But after earning his computer engineering degree, Sam Rusk stepped into something much bigger: He and fellow engineering alums Chris Fernandez (BSBME ’14, MSBME ’15) and Nick Glattard (BSBME ’14, MSBME ’15) began working full time on a company they founded while still at UW-Madison. A decade later, that business, EnsoData, is transforming sleep medicine through the power of AI.

EnsoData’s products, including some of the first FDA-approved machine learning software in healthcare, use artificial intelligence to improve testing, diagnosis and treatment of medical issues like sleep apnea. The Madison-based company, which currently has 50 full-time employees, has raised more than $50 million in capital, with plans to apply its data products to problems in other fields of medicine in the near future.

Rusk, who heads up AI research and deployment at EnsoData, says that during the decade-long journey of building the company, he’s had to wear many hats and learn all sorts of new skills, like HR, sales and regulatory compliance. But the skills that built the business and are still at its core came directly from the College of Engineering, he says.

“During undergrad, I ended up specializing in digital signal processing, which is pretty similar to what we’re doing as a company,” he says. “I learned all the core skills of what being an engineer means at school, and we founded the company directly from our undergrad and master’s degrees. That was direct training for the business that we’re in.”

What classes influenced you most?

It wasn’t really a class, just the whole entrepreneurship environment at UW-Madison that we got into my senior year. It was really empowering, learning how to take an idea and start a business. We did product competitions and worked with the Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic. All those things made starting a company seem more doable.

What’s the impact of your work?

We’re running almost 20% of all the sleep medicine and sleep apnea diagnostic tests in the country right now. I think we’re helping people get diagnosed faster and at lower cost. Some of the things we want to do in the future will hopefully improve patient outcomes, if they haven’t already been doing that.

Which do you prefer?

Fun on the Terrace or fun on Lake Mendota?
Lake Mendota. I’m a swimmer, and I like to try to get to the middle of the lake from shore.

State Street or the Lakeshore Path?
Lakeshore Path.

Favorite campus memory?
I think just hanging out by the lake. I used to live in a house on Langdon Street, and we’d always go to the docks along the lakeshore and drink some … uh, water.