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Hi there! I’m Dan.

I’m a researcher, computer scientist, and mathematician based out of San Francisco. I began my career at Jane Street Capital, working on novel non-convex optimization techniques and [redacted]. I left to found Lumenary, an applied AI research company backed by Y Combinator.

I really like building things–the entire process, from ideation to implementation. I think we have an obligation to leave the world better than we found it, and I believe my best way of doing so is through technological innovation and research. As of late, I’ve been most interested in neural networks with physics-informed inductive biases, novel product interfaces for AI technology, and long context vision language models.

I consider myself a life-long learner–I read textbooks and research papers in my free time. This is not limited to technical subjects; I spend much of my time thinking about social sciences and humanities as well. I’m passionate about effective technical communication and writing; I occasionally post my writing on my blog, Isomorphic.

If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at: dan DOT dipietro DOT pub @ gmail DOT com. I’m always excited to meet other folks doing interesting things in the valley.

Research

For detailed information on my research, please see the appropriate page. Also, my Google Scholar profile is available here.

  • DiPietro, D. M., & Zhu, B. (2022). Symplectically Integrated Symbolic Regression of Hamiltonian Dynamical Systems. arXiv:2209.01521. Paper.
  • DiPietro, D. M., & Hazari, V. D. (2022). DiPietro-Hazari Kappa: A Novel Metric for Assessing Labeling Quality via Annotation. arXiv:2209.08243. Paper.
  • DiPietro, D. M. (2022). Quantitative Stopword Generation for Sentiment Analysis via Recursive and Iterative Deletion. arXiv:2209.01519. Paper.
  • DiPietro, D. M., Hazari, V. D., & Vosoughi, S. (2022). Robin: A Novel Online Suicidal Text Corpus of Substantial Breadth and Scale. arXiv:2209.05707. Paper.
  • DiPietro, D. M., Xiong, S., & Zhu, B. (2020). Sparse Symplectically Integrated Neural Networks. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. Paper.
  • Deng, Y., Zhang, Y., He, X., Yang, S., Tong, Y., Zhang, M., DiPietro, D. M., & Zhu, B. (2020). Soft Multicopter Control using Neural Dynamics Identification. Conference on Robot Learning. Paper.
  • Fleiss, A., Cui, H., Stoikov, S., & DiPietro, D. M. (2020). Constructing Equity Portfolios from SEC 13F Data Using Feature Extraction and Machine Learning. Journal of Financial Data Science, 2(1), 45-60. Paper.
  • DiPietro, D. M. (2019). Alpha Cloning: Using Quantitative Techniques and SEC 13F Data for Equity Portfolio Optimization and Generation. Journal of Financial Data Science, 1(4), 159-171. Paper.

Software Projects

For detailed information on my software projects, please see the appropriate page. Most of my research has involved exciting and novel computational implementations; these are recorded on the research page.

  • Fairer Features: ML pipeline that uses computer vision and large language models to extract latent demographic and portrayal information from image datasets. A novel optimization approach re-weights the images to reduce any present biases. Interviewed for YCombinator 2023W.
  • DSRPytorch: From-scratch PyTorch implementation of Deep Symbolic Regression. Implements RL policy gradients, batching of variable-length sequences, and a sequence-to-PyTorch transpiler (allowing models to write PyTorch code).
  • GPU Optimization Code: Implemented a conjugate gradient solver using CUDA. Via some clever computational tricks, my implementation beats a naive GPU implementation by 10x.
  • D2 BioSoftware: Computer vision project that detects and counts the number of bacterial colonies present on a petri dish. Implemented using OpenCV and Electron; used by the McGowan Institue of Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Miscellaneous

  • I’m an avid botanist and carnivorous plant collector, specializing in the genera Nepenthes, Heliamphora, and Drosera. I write about my plants here and have published a book on them, available here.
  • I really like the outdoors, especially skiing and mountaineering. I’m slowly working my way through climbing all peaks in Colorado above 14,000 feet (affectionately called the 14ers). I did 11 last summer!
  • I enjoy playing jazz piano and drums.