Trent McConaghy

Trent's vision is to have a shared public database for the internet, to allow sovereign management of personal data and to celebrate the cultural commons while compensating creators. Towards this, he works on the IPDB network & foundation, BigchainDB blockchain database software, Coala IP protocol, and advise Estonian E-residency program. These are building blocks towards his long-term goal - to help ensure that humanity has a role in an increasingly autonomous world. Trent started his career by doing AI research for national defense in the 1990s, while still an undergraduate. Then, in his first startup (ADA), he explored creative AI. ADA was acquired in 2004 and then extended that work during his PhD, and found a way to reconcile machine creativity with existing engineering knowledge. In his second startup (Solido), he leveraged AI to help drive Moore's Law, which was under threat due to manufacturing variations. Now, Solido SW is used for most modern chip designs. Most recently Trent co-founded ascribe to help compensate creators in the digital era (via IP on the blockchain) and this work evolved into IPDB, BigchainDB, and Coala IP. More: -PhD in EE from KU Leuven, Belgium. Awarded #1 thesis worldwide in the field. -BE EE and BsC CS from U Saskatchewan, Canada. Awarded #1 final year thesis. -Did ML research for Canadian Department of National Defense. -Wrote 2 Books [1,2] on ML, circuits and creativity. Also 35 Papers, 20 Patents. -Keynotes & invited talks at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley, JPL, Nvidia, IFA+ Summit, Data Science Day Berlin, PyData Berlin, more. Regular lecturer at Data Science Retreat [link]. -Organize Singularity Meets Self Improvement [link] and co-organize Berlin Machine Learning [link] meetups. Co-organized workshops on ML / circuits [e.g. 1,2,3,4]. TPC / reviewer for many conferences & journals [e.g. 1,2,3,4,5] -Past projects: painting, BCI hacking, hypnosis, video game programming, surfing. -Raised in a pig farm in Canada, hacking away on cold winter nights.