Clodéric Mars

AI Product Engineer & Tech Leader, turning research prototypes into enterprise products since 2006

Montréal, QC

Canada

Since 2006, I have been deeply committed to a singular goal: fostering the collaboration between humans and AIs. Throughout my career, I have significantly contributed to various projects where AI augments human expertise. These projects include enhancing movie production with AI-driven characters, optimizing transportation infrastructure through simulation & data analysis, developing effective & realistic training simulations, and improving the efficiency of energy infrastructure operations.

I excel at bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and B2B applications. My leadership spans recruiting and guiding teams of engineers and researchers within high-pressure, deep tech startup environments. I design strategic product roadmaps and spearhead collaborative R&D programs, always ensuring I remain hands-on with technical architecture and coding.

A generalist software engineer, my competencies include human-in-the-loop systems design, applied AI, distributed cloud architecture, and full-stack development. I am also an effective communicator, proficient in both French and English, capable of articulating complex ideas clearly and persuasively.

Experiences

since 2020/08 - Montréal, Canada

VP of Engineering - AI Redefined

  • Coordination of product & technological strategy, research and external collaboration efforts in line with corporate strategy and business development.
  • Recruiting and leading the research & engineering team from 5 to 16 engineers & researchers.
  • Key contribution to product and sales strategy, as well as operations: defining offers, managing the product roadmap, participating in business development, setuping technological & research partnerships.
  • Hands-on research and development of Cogment a multi-agent, human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning orchestration platform and several projects implementing it: Python, Go, Javascript, Kubernetes, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning, Data Science.
  • Coordination and contributions on multiple collaborations including with Thales, CAE, NAV CANADA, University of Alberta, MILA and IRT SystemX.
from 2020/08 to 2021/01 - Paris, France

Freelance AI engineer - AI Redefined

Contribution & coordination of the open source release of Cogment v1.

from 2015/03 to 2020/04 - Paris, France

Co-founder & CTO - craft ai

  • Development of the company from 7 to 20+ employees, participation in fundraising for a total of ~9M€, deployment of ~10 AI projects within large companies including EDF, Total and Dassault Aviation.
  • Leading product development, R&D and Customer Success teams.
  • Hands-on development of an explainable AI SaaS specialized in time series: Rust, Javascript, Python, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes, Docker, machine learning, data science.
from 2012/01 to 2015/02 - Paris, France

Lead Software Engineer & Product Manager - MASA Group

  • Leading a product development team (~5 software engineers) based in Paris and Munich.
  • Managing an AI product, a middleware enabling non-specialists to create and control AIs for simulations and video games: Technical pre-sales, participation to business development, speaker at several international conferences (e.g. GDC), coordination with the research team.
  • Development of the behavior tree and spatial reasoning engine: C++, Computational Geometry, Game AI, Unity, Ogre3d, VBS2/3.
from 2010/01 to 2011/12 - Rennes, France

R&D Software Engineer - Golaem

from 2009/02 to 2009/12 - Rennes, France

R&D Software Engineer - Inria

Development of a 3d simulation engine and industrialization of a navigation engine for virtual crowds: C++, Qt, Ogre3d, Computational Geometry, Game AI.

from 2006/07 to 2009/02 - Rennes, France

Software Engineer - Teamlog (acquired by Open)

from 2006/02 to 2006/09 - Rennes, France

AI Research Intern - Inria

Member of the Bunraku project-team, advised by Fabrice Lamarche. Environment representation formalism for crowd simulation using semantic & topologic abstraction of navigation graphs.

Additional activities

from 2020/07 to 2020/12

Contributor - The Good AI

The Good AI was a plateform and a collaborative media focused on responsible application for AI. I contributed written content for the website.

from 2020/05 to 2020/06 - Paris, France

Data Scientist (volunteer) - APHP

Data extraction and preparation for epidemiological studies of the first COVID-19 patients in Paris hospitals: Python, PostgreSQL, Apache Spark, data science.

from 2015/01 to 2016/07 - Vienna, Austria

Track chair - nucl.ai

nucl.ai was a yearly AI developper conference, for 2 years I was track chair: content selection & refinement, speakers management and presenter. In 2016, I was in charge of the "Cognition, Bots & Understanding" track (cognition, bots & compréhension - with speakers from Snips, Recast.AI, IBM Watson and others); in 2015, de "Agent Behaviors" track (with speakers from Square Enix, Creative Assembly, Bohemia Interactive Simulations and others).

Education

from 2001/09 to 2006/06 - Rennes, France

MEng (Diplôme d'ingénieur) in Computer Science - INSA de Rennes

2 years of general scientific and engineering courses followed by 3 years of computer science specialization.

from 2005/09 to 2006/06 - Rennes, France

MSc in Artificial Intelligence - Université de Rennes 1

Academia-oriented 1 year curriculum with a focus on Artificial Intelligence, including machine learning and symbolic reasoning, in collaboration with Inria.

MOOCS

Peer-reviewed publications

Full list on Google Scholar

Talks

Other Publications