Luis joined Madrona as a Venture Partner in early 2018 and leads our technical advisory board. He is the Co-founder and CEO of OctoML, a Madrona portfolio company and University of Washington spin-out that offers an efficient compute layer for AI. Luis has a track record of entrepreneurship and technical leadership. He spent the summer of 2017 with Madrona and has been a vital partner as we’ve evaluated new ideas and companies. In 2008, Luis co-founded Corensic, another Madrona-backed UW-CSE spin-off company.
Journey to Madrona <
Luis is an award-winning professor of computer science at the University of Washington, where he joined the faculty in 2007. He is also the inaugural holder of the Lazowska Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Luis’ research focuses on the intersection of computer architecture, programming languages, molecular biology, and machine learning. At UW, he co-directs the SAMPL Lab, which focuses on hardware/software co-optimization for machine learning — and where the Apache TVM deep learning compilation and optimization stack started. He is also a co-director of the Molecular Information Systems Lab, which leads pioneering research in the intersection of computing and biology for IT applications such as DNA data storage.
Lesson learned
- Read and learn across areas and fields as much as possible — those intersections are full of opportunities for breakthroughs.
- It is impossible to do big things alone. Building a strong team with great culture is the most important thing a leader needs to do.
When he’s not in the office…
Luis loves to pursue the art of cooking and eating. He is also an art fan and VR and is a drone enthusiast. According to his life partner, Karin Strauss, Luis’s sense of color matching for clothing is random.
Noteworthy
Luis is widely recognized as a leader in machine learning and AI. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for advancing new paradigms in computer architecture and programming systems. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, the IEEE TCCA Young Computer Architect Award, the ACM Maurice Wilkes Award, and the UIUC Distinguished Alumni Award. His research has been featured prominently in the media, including The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, and The Wall Street Journal.
Luis is from São Paulo, Brazil, where it always drizzles, just like Seattle. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his bachelor’s and master’s in electrical engineering from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
