Lars Liden

About

Lars received his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University, where he built biologically inspired neural network models (opens in new tab) for processing visual motion.  For the next several years he built artificial intelligence systems for the game industry, working at Valve (opens in new tab)and Presto Studios (opens in new tab).

He has worked in many different capacities, including individual contributor and team manager, taking numerous software projects from initial conception to worldwide deployment, both as startup founder and as a team leader at a Fortune 500 company. At Microsoft he was a co-founder of the Bot Framework. Previously, at Amazon, he managed the three teams that run  the IMDb (opens in new tab) website.  While in Amazon’s retail organization, he started and built out the Softlines Systems team, which created tools for Top Down Budget Planning, Assortment Planning, Forecasting and Commitment Tracking for the Softlines business, representing over a half-billion dollar market, including apparel, shoes and sporting goods.  He co-founded the Amazon Commerce Web Services program, with the purpose of decoupling Amazon’s e-commerce web services from the Amazon retail pipeline, making them available for standalone use by external parties.

He started two companies, TeachTown (opens in new tab), a subscription-based software treatment system for individuals with autism that is currently used in over 3000 schools nationwide, and Apex Nanotechnology, a computer aided molecular design platform (now defunct) with an artificial intelligence tutor for computational chemistry.

In his spare time he enjoys hanging out with smart, creative folks and making things – from designing and building an omni-directional car (opens in new tab) to metal work for a 26-ft Rubik’s Cube on display at the Pacific Science Center (opens in new tab).