Alessandro Usseglio Viretta

From developing particle detectors at CERN to modeling brain function, gene networks, and financial markets: A software enthusiast pushing the boundaries of science, technology, and business.

Currently

• Exploring Large Language Models’ business potential
• Head of Tech Talent and Innovation at Tributary Ventures: Analysis of prospective portfolio companies.
• Engaged dad of a 8-year-old girl.

Past

2010-2021

• Founder, developer and Managing Director of Fabnami
  E-commerce platform for 3D-Printing bureaus, the first startup of its kind completely based on serverless (AWS) technology.
• CTO at CustVox (now SandSiv).
  Acqui-hired with the Zeelch platform.
  Hired and managed a fully remote team, designed and developed a ML-based text-analytics web app.
• Designer and developer of the Zeelch social identity platform, acquired by CustVox.

2005-2010

• Founder and Managing Director of In Numero LLC
  Software development and data modeling consultancy in the fields of financial and medical data.
  Development of pricing algorithms for financial derivatives.
  Designed the architecture of a data-acquisition and analysis platform for medical IoT appliances.
  Hired and managed a mixed remote/local development team.
• Manager/Consultant at Oliver Wyman London, financial risk modeling for major banks.
• Consultant at IRIS integrated risk management AG, ALM app for banks.

2003-2005

• Project leader, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich.
• Researcher, Institute for Biotechnology, ETH Zurich.
  Pioneered the modeling and simulation of gene and biochemical networks.

Education

2013 ZHAW School of Management and Law
Growth & international strategies, product management and development, financing, personal and team management.

1997-2003 Doctoral student and assistant at the Institute for Neuroinformatics, ETH Zurich
Modeling of brain function with Hopfield neural networks.

1995-1996 Technical Student, CERN Geneva
Simulated, manufactured and tested a particle detector prototype.

1990-1995 Physics, at the University of Torino (Italy) and Heidelberg (Germany).
Physics major, Biophysics minor, diploma thesis at CERN.

Computing

• Started in 1985 with assembler on a ZX Spectrum.
• Experienced the early time of the Web at CERN.
• Simulated atomic-scale events with Fortran.
• Used C, C++, Java, Scala in production.
• Considers Python a necessary evil.
• Currently hooked on Elixir and the PETAL stack.

Languages

• Italian mother tongue
• Highly proficient English
• Good German
• Basic French and Spanish

Publications

• An engineered epigenetic transgene switch in mammalian cells, Nature Biotechnology Volume 22, pages 867–870 (2004)
• Modeling the Quorum Sensing Regulatory Network of Human-Pathogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Biotechnology Progress, Volume 20, Issue 3 (2004)
• A network implementation of a Markov model, Diss., Naturwissenschaften ETH Zürich, Nr. 14987 (2003)
• Encoding the Temporal Statistics of Markovian Sequences of Stimuli in Recurrent Neuronal Networks, ICANN 2002: Artificial Neural Networks, pp 204–209
• Fly-like visuomotor responses of a robot using aVLSI motion-sensitive chips, Biological Cybernetics Volume 85, pages 449–457 (2001)