Summary
Jonathan Lettvin is a Principal Research Scientist and entrepreneur with 14+ years of software and research experience building low-level, high-performance systems and biologically inspired sensory-motor technologies. He leads Synthetic Reflex and The Brain Building Kit to create synthetic reflexes that emulate animal nervous systems for robots, processes, and avatars, blending MIT-trained physics rigor with decades of hands-on lab work in optic nerve experiments on frogs, cats, and octopus. A seasoned polyglot programmer (C++/STL/Boost, Python/scipy/OpenCV, x86 ASM and more), he has architected compilers, debuggers, antiviruses, image processors, neuron emulators and production-grade tooling across startups and enterprises. Notable for translating physical insight into software, he patented image-processing breakthroughs and built a market-feed lexer that reduced multi-terabyte ingest time from 36 hours to 1.5 hours. Based in Worcester, MA, he consistently pairs radical technical breadth with experimental neuroscience insight to deliver novel sensorimotor and perception solutions.
14 years of coding experience
33 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.), Physics, Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.), Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology