DOGE Technologist and Thiel Fellow Luke Farritor
February 10th, 2025And now, Department of Energy: …listed as an engineer in the DOE’s staff directory…
Hmm.
Via: R&D World:
Before he joined the White House’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), 23-year-old engineer and former SpaceX software intern Luke Farritor was already making waves in digital archaeology. In 2023, he helped lead the Grand Prize-winning team in the Vesuvius Challenge—netting a portion of a $700,000 payout—by using state-of-the-art “autosegmentation” algorithms to virtually unroll a fragile Herculaneum scroll without physically cracking its carbonized layers. The Musk Foundation is among the biggest financial backers of the Vesuvius Challenge, whose partners include the Getty and the Google data science subsidiary Kaggle.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published on Feb. 9, 2024, the contest was launched by investors and scholars hoping to spur breakthroughs in reading these carbonized scrolls. It ultimately drew more than 3,000 competitors, including college students, software engineers, and AI researchers—all aiming to unearth texts lost for nearly 2,000 years.
Two years after virtually unrolling a scorched Herculaneum scroll along with Youssef Nader and Julian Schilliger, 23-year-old software whiz and Thiel Fellow Luke Farritor is once again in the spotlight—this time for his involvement at DOGE, reportedly receiving access to the Department of Energy’s IT system and listed as an engineer in the DOE’s staff directory.
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