About

Jed McCaleb is the Founder of the Astera Institute. His focus is on accelerating progress, expanding potential, and increasing net happiness.

He is also co-founder and Chief Architect of the Stellar Development Foundation, the organization that maintains the open-source Stellar Network.

He has donated to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, OpenAI, and many other causes.

Alan Zheng is an intern at the Obelisk lab working primarily on building biologically-inspired deep learning architectures and algorithms about memory and navigation (with a focus on cognitive map).

He is currently a PhD student in Psychology at the University of California, Davis in Randall O’Reilly’s Computational Cognitive Neuroscience lab and Charan Ranganath’s Dynamic Memory Lab.

Andrew focuses on under-explored areas of climate change adaptation and response. He also co-authors The Orbital Index, a weekly newsletter about the space industry, and is co-founding a stealth aerospace startup. He previously worked at Vast Space, Kubos, Mavenlink, and Pivotal Labs, and has advised a variety of Bay Area startups.

Emily Cooper draws on her background in executive support, philanthropy, people operations, and recruiting to provide administrative and operational support to the founder, as well as the Astera team as a whole.

Before joining Astera, she supported the CEO and co-founder of Arcadia Science during its initial year and served as the Executive Assistant to the CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation supporting both the CEO and the Board. She received her B.A. in Art History from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

Gary works on various aspects of Obelisk. Previously at Microsoft he led teams working on the Open Neural Network Exchange ecosystem. Prior to that, he worked at Google where he led teams working on engineering productivity for the Fuchsia operating system and Google’s search infrastructure.

Hayley supports the behind-the-scenes operations at Astera.

Previously, she has worked as an office manager and recruiter within the tech and legal industries. She received her BS in Child Development and Psychology from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo.

Kevin focuses on designing machine learning algorithms inspired by neuroscience and human cognition on the Obelisk team. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Randy O’Reilly at UC Davis and as a statistician for health sciences at Virginia Tech.

Michael works on integrating ideas from cognitive science into novel machine learning designs for the Obelisk team. He has previously worked on developing conversational characters with agent-based reasoning at Disney Research, developing algorithms pertaining to multi-agent coordination at the ARL, and applying reinforcement learning techniques for procedural animation as an \Art fellow.

Michael develops tools and processes to speed up scientific discovery. He was an early pioneer of both quantum computing and the open science movement. He co-wrote “Quantum Computation and Quantum Information,” one of the most cited physics texts of all time, and his book “Reinventing Discovery” helped make open science a global issue in the scientific community. His earlier positions include being Foundation Professor of Quantum Information Science at the University of Queensland.

Michael is a pioneer in quantum computing and the open science movement. He co-wrote Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, one of the most cited physics texts of all time. His book Reinventing Discovery helped make open science a global issue in the scientific community.

Previously he was the Foundation Professor of Quantum Information Science at the University of Queensland where he co-founded and directed the Quantum Information Science Initiative. He has been a Research Fellow at the Recurse Center and Y Combinator Research, where he developed novel tools to augment human cognition, such as Quantum Country, an interactive medium to help people better understand complex material.

Michele leads the Science program at Astera. Previously, she developed innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing conservation challenges at Revive & Restore. At the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, she helped set scientific priorities and design the program strategy for the Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative. She is a naturalist and an evolutionary biologist with a PhD in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley.

Prachee is a Science Advisor at Astera. She is also a scientist, and Co-Founder and CSO of Arcadia Science. She comes from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth where she is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Prachee is an open science advocate and the President of ASAPbio, a non-profit promoting innovation in life science communication. Her PhD is in Neuroscience from the University of Utah.

Randy is internationally recognized as a founder of the field of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, publishing a widely-cited textbook (O’Reilly & Munakata, 2000; 2014) and a number of influential papers in this field. He develops large-scale systems-neuroscience computational models of learning, memory, and motivated cognitive control, to learn how neurons give rise to human cognitive function and to inform our understanding of brain-based disorders such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.

Seemay leads overarching strategy at Astera. She is also a scientist, Pew Scholar, and co-founder and CEO at Arcadia Science. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF, and she received a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. She was born and raised in Texas.

Simon is working on CPU & GPU performance optimisations for Obelisk by implementing new parallelization schemes and writing kernels. Previously, he worked on compilers for deep learning hardware accelerators at AMD. He holds a Computer Science degree from ETH Zurich, where he published research into using large deep learning models for drug-development based on single-cell RNA sequencing data.

Steven is doing research at the intersection of neuroscience and Artificial General Intelligence Safety and Alignment. To read his public writing on this topic, click here.

Before working on AGI Safety, he was a physicist in academia and industry. He has a Physics PhD from UC Berkeley.

Thomas, MD MBA is a Researcher at the Astera Institute primarily contributing literature review support for the Obelisk project.  Previously, he served as Senior Researcher with e-Cortex, Inc. and as Research Associate in Randall O’Reilly’s Computational Cognitive Neuroscience lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to that he practiced internal medicine and served in a series of executive management roles for a variety of medical groups and health care organizations in Florida, Southern California, and Colorado.