Patryk Laurent

Patryk Laurent, Ph.D.

CEO Technologist Entrepreneur Researcher

I build, lead teams, and prioritize keeping others unblocked. My expertise spans AI and machine learning, edge computing, robotics, computer vision, and data science — and I work at the frontier where research meets product. I'm driven by curiosity, energized by hard problems, and genuinely enjoy working alongside the people building solutions.

patryk@pakl.net pakl.net Google Scholar GitHub

I write about AI, leadership, and the ideas and experiments behind my work. Visit my blog for details, more context, and what's new.

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Career
2025 — present · Promoted
Chief Executive Officer
Scenera, Inc.
San Diego & Cupertino, CA
Executive
  • Developing and driving Scenera's open edge AI platform strategy for data and app stores.
  • Forming strategic partnerships and go-to-market to disseminate Scenera technology and IP.
2023 — 2025
Chief Scientific Officer
Scenera, Inc.
San Diego & Palo Alto, CA
Executive
  • Directed data management and data science for video, IoT, and time-series analytics.
  • Led engineering on edge device software and data lake/warehousing systems.
  • Delivered processes to manage big data and large numbers of custom ML models.
  • Aligned AI and infrastructure research to business requirements, accelerating ROI.
2022 — present
Principal
Lighthill Technologies, Inc.
San Diego, CA
Entrepreneur
  • Serving as fractional CTO or chief data scientist for startups — strategy, architecture, and execution.
2018 — 2022
Director of Emerging Technologies
DMGT, plc.
San Diego, CA & London, England
Executive
  • Created a Center of Excellence for data scientists across portfolio companies, injecting knowledge and best practices — leading to significant value multipliers.
  • Rapidly evaluated key ML and software technologies to accelerate transformation and development.
  • Established automated pipelines to shrink stakeholder-to-data-scientist development cycles.
  • Implemented systems to bundle technology as product SKUs with minimal Engineering involvement.
2020 · 6-month assignment
Architect in Residence — Trepp, LLC. (New York, NY)
  • Identified data science product opportunities leveraging Trepp's AWS-based data lake.
  • Built proofs-of-concept on commercial real estate (CRE) and CMBS datasets using TensorFlow and Transformers.
2019 · 11-month assignment
Director, Data Intelligence — Genscape, Inc. (Louisville, KY / Boston, MA)
  • Led 12+ data scientists developing models to nowcast energy consumption, production, and demand.
  • Built models from EMF sensors, satellite images, weather data, and video feeds using TensorFlow.
2017 — 2018
Director of Artificial Intelligence Initiatives
CliniComp, Intl.
San Diego, CA
Technical Lead
  • Applied ML to classify and forecast dynamical, multi-scale temporal and spatial clinical data.
  • Grew and managed a team of 5 data scientists and data engineers.
  • Bridged data science, software engineering, and product domain experts.
2017
Co-founder & CTO
Lasso Home, Inc.
San Diego & Mountain View, CA
Entrepreneur
  • Built a mobile app leveraging computer vision to track and maintain home appliances (iOS, Node.js).
2016 — 2017
Director of Engineering (AI)
LeEco US
San Diego, CA & Beijing, China
Technical Lead
  • Built computer vision and ML apps across an Android ecosystem of devices (TensorFlow, OpenCV).
  • Designed novel UI/UX to recognize naturalistic user behaviors and minimize false positives.
2012 — 2016 · Promoted
Senior Scientist → Director of R&D
Brain Corporation
San Diego, CA
Research & Industry
  • Managed a team of 8+ scientists and engineers (Ph.D. and M.Sc. level).
  • Co-designed a state-of-the-art ML architecture for robust continuous video object tracking (DARPA-funded).
  • Documented, packaged, and deployed a commercially-available robotics software framework.
  • Designed an iOS gamepad interface for supervised learning in robots, including the eyeRover showcase robot.
  • Built a smarthome ML prototype to control IoT devices and robots via visual cues and gestures on Qualcomm hardware.
2009 — 2012
Researcher
Dept. of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
Academia
  • Used Reinforcement Learning to investigate visual attention and human decision-making via fMRI and behavioral methods.
  • Analyzed recurrent spiking neural networks as a mechanism for reward discounting.
  • Provided technical support for multiple fMRI and big data projects across Hopkins labs.
2003 — 2009
Researcher & Ph.D. Candidate
Center for Neuroscience, Univ. of Pittsburgh & CMU (CNBC)
Pittsburgh, PA
Academia
  • Simulated RL agents that learned saccadic eye movement control and visual attention in reading and survival tasks.
  • Studied RL of motor and cognitive activity in human brain areas using fMRI.
  • Developed a real-time sound/echo cancellation technique to hear fMRI participants during scanning.
  • Studied recurrent neural networks for continuous speech perception (with Jay McClelland).
2002 — 2003
Software Developer
Super Natural Tools, Inc.
Roanoke, VA
Engineering
  • Co-wrote and deployed a streaming communications and data analysis system in Java.
  • Adopted agile development and extreme programming techniques early.
2000 — 2002
Co-founder & CTO
Inductive Logic, Inc.
Darden Business Incubator, Charlottesville, VA
Entrepreneur
  • Developed early NLP sentiment analysis software for internet forums — well before the term "social listening" existed.
1997 — 2000
Software Developer & Researcher
ScholarOne, Inc. & Laboratory of Systems Neurodynamics, UVA
Charlottesville, VA
Engineering
  • Co-developed ManuscriptCentral and AbstractCentral online publishing platforms (later acquired by Reuters).
  • Researched sparse recurrent spiking neural networks for memory, sequence learning, and language processing.
Education
Ph.D.
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience
Center for Neuroscience, University of Pittsburgh
Certificate
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Carnegie Mellon University
B.A.
Cognitive Sciences (minor: Mathematics)
University of Virginia
· Echols Scholar
· Holland-Ridley Scholar
35
Patents as named inventor
36
Scientific publications (two single-author)

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