Laurent Daudet

Laurent Daudet is a Professor of Physics at Université Paris Cité (on leave) and CTO & co-founder of LightOn, a startup developing optical computing technologies. His research spans signal processing, wave physics, and machine learning, with a focus on scalable AI solutions. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Marseille University and is a graduate of École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Research Interests: Laurent’s work bridges academia and industry, addressing challenges in massive-scale AI, optical computing, and hardware optimization. He leads cross-disciplinary R&D projects at LightOn, advancing technologies like the Optical Processing Unit (OPU) for low-power, parallel computing.

Awards:

• Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France

Grants & Advising: Over 200 scientific publications and patents; collaborates globally with researchers and engineers. Former academic roles include Visiting Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and Visiting Professor at the National Institute for Informatics (Tokyo).

Labs & Teams: Leads LightOn’s R&D initiatives, integrating optics, ML, electronics, and software engineering to tackle AI scalability challenges.