Welcome Ali Rastegar to Our Founding Engineering Team!
Sep 5, 2024
Grantx Welcomes Seyed Ali Rastegar as Founding Engineer
We are excited to announce that Seyed Ali Rastegar has joined Grantx as a Full-Stack Developer, bringing with him a wealth of experience and a passion for leveraging artificial intelligence to transform the trillion-dollar grant funding landscape. As one of the first developers on our team, Ali will play a pivotal role in developing and scaling the AI-powered tools that are central to Grantx’s mission of simplifying and accelerating the grant application process for universities, researchers, and nonprofits.
A Passion for Innovation and AI-Powered Solutions
Ali's expertise in AI and software development is rooted in his diverse experiences across academia and industry. As a double major in Mathematics and Data Science at UC Berkeley, he has conducted cutting-edge research on human learning at UC Irvine, exploring if, like machine learning, it is subject to a bias-variance tradeoff. This work led to a publication in the prestigious journal Cognitive Science. Prior to joining GrantX, Ali co-founded two successful generative AI startups, DSNR.ai and Coglayer.com, which collectively attracted over 50,000 users. At DSNR, he developed an AI image generation platform, while Coglayer served as an AI thinking partner, showcasing his ability to bring innovative AI solutions to market.
Ali's commitment to innovation has earned him recognition in various forms. He was one of 200 students chosen nationally as a Morgan Stanley Jumpstart Scholar, where he worked closely with investment bankers on sustainable finance projects and presented to executives. His technical skills were further validated when he and his team won 3rd place at Stanford's Treehacks hackathon, developing an AI copilot for people with disabilities. As a TripleByte Certified Engineer, Ali has demonstrated his proficiency across a wide range of programming languages and frameworks.
Shaping the Future of Grant Funding at Grantx
At Grantx, Ali’s expertise in AI and his experience in building user-centric platforms will be instrumental in realizing our vision of a more efficient grant funding ecosystem. His work will focus on developing AI-powered applications that significantly reduce the time and resources required to win grant funding, cutting the process from weeks to days. Ali's commitment to using technology for social good aligns perfectly with Grantx's mission, as we aim to empower researchers and nonprofits to access the funding they need to drive groundbreaking research and social initiatives.
A Leader in Technology and Social Impact
Beyond his technical achievements, Ali is deeply committed to using technology for social good. He has led volunteer coding initiatives to build applications for nonprofits, fostered professional development in tech communities as VP of Professional Development for a collaborative focused on empowering underrepresented technologists, and advocated for ethical AI development through policy engagement, including lobbying congressional offices on the harms of discriminatory AI.
We are thrilled to have Ali on board and look forward to the incredible innovations he will bring to Grantx. His vision and expertise will undoubtedly help us revolutionize the grant funding process and make a lasting impact on the communities we serve.
Welcome to the team, Ali!