Meeting LeRon by Brian Swichkow

Justin Lane, PhD on how he met LeRon Shults, PhD PhD:

LeRon first reached out to me in 2011 to collaborate because he believed we had similar research interests*. In 2015, LeRon and his friend/colleague Wesley Wildman reached out to me while I was finishing my doctoral research to help them on a large project at Boston University where they had ~$2m to use computer simulation and AI to study religion and culture. I joined the project as a post-doctoral fellow where I acted as lead developer and expert in cognitive science. During the first year of the project LeRon and I got quite close and really loved collaborating on things and debating aspects of philosophy and science. While working at the Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center we went to dinner (the Applebees in Norfolk Virginia) and also discussed our love of stock trading and how frustrated we were with how "impact" was understood in universities. Years later, we founded a company together to take our research out of the Ivory Tower and provide better value to our communities by creating AI that is relevant to understanding social communities and critical issues like Climate Change.