My career has been in pursuit of great challenges and learning opportunities. These guiding signals have served me well thus far, kindly summed in my Forbes Under 30 in Science honors:
Lavin is something of a polymath, having been a literal rocket scientist at NASA and Blue Origin before turning his hand to AI development.
See lavin.io/research for AI research publications and more.
Places I’ve worked
Pasteur Labs & ISI | Founder
Latent Sciences | Founder
Commercialization of a close-to-the-metal AI engine for simulation of heterogeneous, longitudinal diseases, with a focus on blood-based biomarkers & neurodegeneration: latentsci.com, a JnJ startup, acquired in 2020.
Vicarious AI | Sr. Research Engineer
Building general artificial intelligence for robotics. My main contributions were towards the neuro-inspired vision system Recursive Cortical Network (see “Common sense, Cortex, and CAPTCHA”), robotic motion planning and trajectory optimzation algorithms, and general software architecture.
Numenta | Sr. Research & Software Engineer
Numenta aims to reverse-engineer the neocortex. My work was developing the biologically derived machine learning algorithms for time-series analytics (anomaly detection) and natural language processing (NLP).
NASA | Scientific Payloads & Systems Engineering
Currently: AI Advisor, Lead on NASA-ESA Digital Twin Earth (with the NASA Frontier Development Lab, in partnership with Pasteur Labs & ISI).
Previously: Systems design for reentry vehicle carrying scientific experiment samples from the Int’l Space Station.
Technion | Rocket Propulsion Researcher
Research for hybrid fuel propulsion engines, including design+build+run firing testbeds.
Hyperloop Transportation Tech | Lead Computational Design & Systems Engineer
Led the mechanical design (and custom optimization of CAD, CFD, FEA, solvers) of early versions of Hyperloop passenger-carrying capsule.
Academia
Carnegie Mellon University | Masters in Mechanical Engineering
Dual studies in computational mechanics (Kenji Shimada) and space robotics (Red Whitaker); led a lunar rover team with Astrobotic for the Google XPrize (winning $1.75M), and researched structural optimization algorithms in collaboration with Blue Origin.
Duke University | Masters in Engineering Management
Concentration in Technology Innovation, including commercialization of brain-sensor technology as a NASA spin-out.
Cornell University | B.S. Mechanical Engineering
Studied mechanical & aerospace engineering – research thesis on cubesat dynamics. Also captain of the men’s varsity golf team.