Sharon Zhou, PhD — CTO
Hit connect to follow along! Follow some things I do or care about on X @realSharonZhou. The purpose of my work is to blend the magic of bleeding-edge technology with human warmth & stories, namely through teaching and building products. I have the great pleasure of teaching AI to nearly a million people, online and at Stanford. I love explaining this magical technology in simple terms (and jokes). My goal is to make the hard thing easy. I also regularly speak to live and online audiences of top AI researchers, Fortune 500 execs, policymakers—from 1 to 100,000s of people. Previously, I founded a generative AI startup Lamini, where we built infrastructure for enterprises to more easily remove hallucinations from LLMs on their custom use cases — specifically, via a mix of agentic data methods and post-training algorithms (mixture of expert LoRAs). We raised just over $25M at ~$136M valuation, before we transitioned to AMD. Before the startup, I was adjunct computer science faculty at Stanford in generative AI, where I also completed my PhD with Andrew Ng. At Stanford, I led a research group of 50+ students, published award-winning research, eg. top 1% paper at NeurIPS, and created a new course on generative AI. The tech was terrible a decade ago, with predecessor models and GPUs that brrrr’d much less, but it was still magical and I fell in love :) For my students, I can't wait to see what *you* build & generate — feel free to tag me in your outputs and certificates (and memes). They really brighten my day, and I do see them, so thank you for those! ----- I have an unusual childhood. A lot of adventure, risk-taking, and spontaneity. Gratitude and integrity were the important things. Before I learned to code, I studied the Classics. I'm interested in what stays the test of time and what lasts millennia. My life mission is to give back to the world what I wish I had had, with something in there that can stand the next millennia. Creations and ideas that drastically change how we act, think, and feel. Like the Classics have. That's why I do what I do. http://sharonzhou.me/ (Maybe up-to-date, maybe not, but there's a pretty picture so feel free to check it out)
Stackforce AI infers this person is a leading expert in AI education and research with a strong entrepreneurial background.
Location: Stanford, California, United States
Experience: 13 yrs 3 mos
Skills
- Teaching
- Generative Ai
- Ai Research
- Product Management
Career Highlights
- Teaching AI to nearly a million people.
- Founded a generative AI startup valued at $136M.
- Published award-winning research at NeurIPS.
Work Experience
AMD
VP of Engineering & AI (10 mos)
Lamini
CEO & Co-Founder (3 yrs)
AI Objectives Institute
Head of AI Research; Advisor (1 yr)
Stanford University
Computer Science Faculty - Adjunct (1 yr)
Computer Science PhD Student (4 yrs)
Computer Science Research Assistant (1 yr)
Angel Investor
Angel Investor (5 yrs 2 mos)
Solos AI
AI Research Scientist (1 yr)
Coursera
Instructor (7 yrs 2 mos)
Sidepact
Managing Partner, Co-Founder (concurrent with PhD) (2 yrs)
Machine Learning Product Manager (1 yr)
Tamr Inc.
Product Manager (1 yr)
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Teaching Fellow (2 yrs)
Parlr
Co-Founder (1 yr)
Foundation of the Hellenic World
Research Intern (0 mo)
Education
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD at Stanford University
Joint B.A. (double major) at Harvard University
at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School
