About
I'm Darius Foodeei, a computer science graduate at ETHZ studying computer science and machine intelligence. You can find most of my work on my github and in a hangar in Zurich. I'm originally from San Francisco, California but I've been living in Europe for most of my life. I've experienced the contrast between the two cultures and I believe Europe is behind in many ways but has so much to gain by supersizing it's ambition with regards to technology and entrepreneurship.
I compulsively obsess about the future and technology. I constantly think about what the world will look like 100 years from now and I hope humanity will have moved beyond earth and will be thriving among the rest of the solar system. I see a future where aligned Artificial Intelligence will have been the key driver for breakthroughs in biology, medicine, material science, robotics and so much more. I believe energy abundance will be the key to humanity's properity and I don't see any other way to achieve it than through breakthroughs in nuclear fusion.
My main interests are:
- Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning I believe self-improving systems will have massive economic impacts. I’m particularly interested in how we move beyond scaling LLMs toward AGI that is autonomous and creative. (Note: I am a strong proponent of open-source AI research).
- Humanoids I see a future where humanoid robotics solve labor shortages in the world, lead expeditions to other planets and are the machines leading the next industrial revolution beyond our pale blue dot. I'm currently leading the development of a humanoid robot at the ETH Robotics Club in Zurich.
- Brain Computer Interfaces (here's a link to a cool intro) A fascinating field which is inherently interdisciplinary. The promise of augmenting our cognitive abilities and being able to interface in a safe way with AGI is what excites me the most. I've taken some neural engineering classes during my studies and I believe BCIs are a game changer for people with disabilities and will help us keep up with superintelligence.
- Decentralized Systems and Blockchain A field where I have extensive experience particularly in blockchain deployed smart contracts for high performance decentralized finance. I think a decentralized financial system native to the internet is the future of money and I am glad to see traditional finance adopting it more and more.
I started and sold a web3 company called honey back in 2022 which offered cross chain money markets when they weren't a thing yet. I've worked at various other companies and startups on very high performance systems and infrastructure for onchain financial applications. I've done some light VC targeting engineering schools like EPFL and ETHZ for the largest pre seed fund in Switzerland Founderful.
I've also done some research at the University of Bern in high school on astrophysics and dark matter in particular. Here is a link to a paper I wrote on gravitational lensing and dark matter distribution in the Milky Way.
Some articles and blogs I think everyone should read :
Currently
M.Sc. in Computer Science at ETHZ, focusing on AI, RL, long task planning and reasoning for learning based robotics. Leading software for the ETH Robotics Club's humanoid robot.
Previously
B.Sc. in Computer Science at EPFL, co-led the Blockchain club there and worked on multiple projects alongside my studies.
Previous Research
Previously at the EPFL MLO Lab, researching semantic uncertainty to improve LLM decoding for reasoning tasks. This was back when Chain of Thought was a breakthrough in the field.
Culture
I like music, here are some of my favorite artists:
- Black Sabbath
- AC/DC
- Drake
- The Doors
- Led Zeppelin
- The Beatles
- The Rolling Stones
- Jimi Hendrix
I also hit the gym and enjoy running. I got a WHOOP a year ago and I think it's a great device to help with sleep and staying fit. I like motorcycles (harleys) and cars (f1 fan).
I use a 2021 M1 Pro MacBook. I find Apple silicon is hard to beat.
Contact
You can reach me at dfoodeei@ethz.ch for anything academic and otherwise here is my personal email: darius.foodei@gmail.com