About me
Hi, I’m Emmanuel, an engineer, researcher, and entrepreneur based in Montréal. I work at the crossroads of artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and blockchain, and I tend to ask the same question in all three: what can physics teach us about how computation, and maybe even mind, actually works?
How I got here
I did my PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke, under Jean Rouat and Bertrand Reulet, working on reservoir computing, a niche corner of AI where you don’t train a network so much as listen to what it already does. (Yes, you can compute with a bucket of water. Ask me about it.) My goal was to understand how to design spiking neural networks that perform well without plasticity, linking circuit properties to dynamics and to performance on tasks. The work led to two papers in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.
What I do now
Along the way, my curiosity kept leaking out of the lab:
- Building: I co-founded Kiwano with Lucas Celotti and Karim Valimamode, born from our paper on SmartDCA, an investing strategy that outperforms the standard dollar-cost average.
- Tinkering: I’ve explored neural networks as a replacement for elliptic curves in cryptography, built a talking markdown interface for ChatGPT, and written hands-on Qiskit tutorials for anyone who wants to program their first quantum circuit.
- Wondering: More recently, I’ve been writing essays on the more philosophical side of things: Gödel and quantum mechanics, conservation laws as a metaphor for Eden, and the idea of consciousnetics, a framework I’m developing about consciousness paired with cybernetic interfaces.
What you’ll find here
This blog is a mix of tutorials, research notes, white papers, and half-finished ideas that I’d rather share than let rot in a drawer. Some posts are technical, some are speculative, and a few are both. If something resonates, or if you think I’m completely wrong, I’d love to hear about it.