Braden Hancock
About Braden Hancock
Braden Hancock is the Co-Founder and Head of Technology at Snorkel AI, where he has worked since 2019. He has a strong background in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with previous roles at major organizations such as Facebook, Google, and Stanford University.
Work at Snorkel AI
Braden Hancock serves as Co-Founder and Head of Technology at Snorkel AI, a position he has held since 2019. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Under his leadership, Snorkel AI has launched its first generative AI offering, which contributed significantly to the company's annual recurring revenue within six months. Hancock oversees the large-scale distributed training of multi-billion parameter models, utilizing over 40 GPUs and up to 10TB of data. He has also played a crucial role in fostering a diverse and inclusive environment within the company, achieving a higher percentage of women on AI research teams compared to the national average.
Education and Expertise
Braden Hancock holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he studied from 2015 to 2019. Prior to that, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from Brigham Young University, completing his studies there from 2010 to 2015. His academic background has equipped him with a strong foundation in both engineering and computer science, which he has applied in various research and industry settings.
Background
Hancock has a diverse professional background that includes significant roles in both academia and industry. He worked at Stanford University as part of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab from 2015 to 2019. Prior to that, he was a research assistant at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University. His early career included a position at the Air Force Research Laboratory, where he worked for four years. He has also gained experience at major tech companies, including Facebook and Google, where he contributed to research initiatives.
Achievements
Braden Hancock has made notable contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. He defined core concepts and workflows for weak supervision, which are now integral to machine learning courses. He co-developed enterprise AI solutions that have generated over $1 billion in value for Fortune 500 companies. Hancock has also been recognized on the Forbes 2023 Best Startup Employers list, highlighting his impact on employer reputation and employee satisfaction at Snorkel AI.
Research Contributions
Throughout his career, Hancock has engaged in various research initiatives focused on programmatic data development, LLM alignment, and synthetic data for both natural language processing and computer vision. He has presented webinars on programmatic labeling and co-authored research on achieving high-quality AI outputs at reduced costs. His work has contributed to the development of data-centric foundation models and new interfaces for machine learning systems.