Skip to main content
Sifa ID
David Dao

David Dao

@daviddao.org

Chief Scientist at GainForest | Protocol Labs R&D | Dr. sc. ETH Zurich | XPRIZE Winner | WEF Davos 50 | prev: AI Researcher at UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at GainForest.Earth

daviddao.org
Report

Dr. David Dao is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of GainForest.Earth, a decentralized science non-profit leveraging technology to address the climate and biodiversity crisis supporting over 800 communities including the Amazon rainforest, East Africa and South-East Asia. His work has earned him and GainForest several awards including the XPRIZE Rainforest, WEF Davos 50 and Ethereum Next Billion. In addition, David is the Economies & Governance Lead of Protocol Labs R&D, aiming to innovate and scale decentralized systems and data-sovereign AI for governance, economies and public goods funding. David studied computer science at ETH Zurich, MIT, UC Berkeley, TUM and Stanford where his scientific work has been widely cited (2100+, h-index 17). He completed his PhD in AI Systems at ETH Zurich where he co-developed efficient algorithms for data valuation. David is an early open-source contributor to libraries such as TensorFlow and maintains a widely starred repository on ethical AI (7000+). His work has been featured in several media including WEF, TEDx, New York Times, BBC4, and Channel News Asia.

Activity

Active on:org.simocracy.simorg.simocracy.agentsorg.simocracy.style

Loading activity...

View full activity

Career: 10

Co-Founder & Chief Scientist

GainForest.Earth

Jun 2022 - Present

GainForest is a swiss-based nature tech non-profit that decentralizes nature finance and research. Winner of the XPRIZE Rainforest, Microsoft AI for Earth, Handelsblatt & BCG Rolemodel Award, Klarna AI for Climate Resilience and Ethereum Next Billion Fellowship. https://gainforest.earth

Co-Lead, PL R&D

Protocol Labs

Dec 2025 - Present

Leading research on economies & governance, especially on decision sovereignty, public goods funding, agentic impact evaluation and impact certification

Senior Researcher / PostDoc

ETH Zürich

May 2023 - Aug 2024

Co-Lead of $10M XPRIZE Rainforest Winner ETH BiodivX, a scientific consortium of 14 institutions and 52 members. Winner of the "most impactful technology" XPRIZE award. 2000+ citations with h-index 17

Doctoral Student

ETH Zürich

Nov 2017 - May 2023

Novel AI and Data Systems for Sustainable Development and Dignified Work

Research Fellow

Oasis Labs

Jan 2019 - May 2019

Leading Kara project, a privacy-preserving data market for medical research build upon Oasis' blockchain technology in joint collaboration with Stanford Medical School and Berkeley University

Adjunct Researcher in Autonomous Driving

Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.

Jul 2017 - Dec 2018

Self-supervised visual planning with deep dynamics models (in collaboration with ETH Zurich)

Machine Learning Intern

Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Inc.

Sunnyvale, CA, USA

Nov 2016 - Jul 2017

Applying deep learning to autonomous driving and planning in intelligent vehicles and co-founded internal machine learning scrum team. Started and supervised projects in trajectory learning and traffic interaction prediction.

Graduate Researcher

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Cambridge, MA, USA

Oct 2015 - May 2016

Applying user-friendly machine learning and deep neural networks for image analysis and chemical-genetic profiling in the Carpenter group at the Broad Institute. Published two journal papers: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/057976, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ymeth.2016.08.018

Graduate Researcher

Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS)

Jan 2014 - Sep 2015

Research in pattern recognition, algorithm engineering and bioinformatics at Stamatakis Group. Published one book chapter: http://sco.h-its.org/exelixis/pubs/Exelixis-RRDR-2013-6.pdf

Google Summer of Code Intern

Google

May 2014 - Aug 2014

Developed interactive data visualization applications for biological data during my Google Summer of Code Fellowship mentored by EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute and the BioJS project. Published one journal paper: https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e07009

Skills: 18

Technical

CD3.jsDeep LearningGoMatlabPython

Business

Data Visualization

Other

AlgorithmsBioinformaticsC++Computer VisionData MiningJavaScriptMachine LearningMachine Translation
Pattern RecognitionTensorFlowWeb Development

Credentials: 2

Advanced Open Water Diver

PADI

Sailing License (D Schein)

Stadt Zürich

Education: 5

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.)

Thesis: Automated Plausibility Analysis of Large Phylogenies

Activities / Societies: College for Gifted Students, University Council, Amnesty International Karlsruhe, Enactus KIT

Technical University Munich

Master of Science (M.Sc.) with Distinction

Thesis: Image-based chemical-genetic profiling using Deep Neural Networks at Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard under Anne Carpenter

Activities / Societies: ACM Student Chapter, Deep Learning Meetup

ETH Zurich

Dr. sc. ETH Zürich

2017 - 2023

Thesis: Advancing Algorithms and Applications for Data Valuation in Machine Learning Advisor: Prof Ce Zhang, Prof Gustavo Alonso

Stanford University

Visiting Researcher

Mar 2019 - Jun 2019

Research in blockchain-based data markets and incentives for medical data at Stanford School of Medicine under Prof. Robert Chang. Leading the Kara project

University of California, Berkeley

Research Fellowship

Jun 2018 - Jan 2019

Research in privacy-preserving and scalable Web3 + AI Systems with Prof. Dawn Song. Leading the Kara project. Awarded UC Berkeley Research Fellowship

Awards: 4

Additional Honors & Awards

» Klarna AI for Climate Resilience (6 out of 1298) » Bhutan International Hackathon Grand Prize » XPRIZE Winners, $10M XPRIZE Rainforest (4 out of 298 Teams) » Handelsblatt & BCG Vordenker 2022 » Davos50, Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum 2022 » Global Shaper, AMNC, World Economic Forum 2018 » AI for Earth Award, Microsoft, 2018 » First Ascent Fellow, 2016 (20 out of 350) » Deutschlandstiftung Integration Scholarship, since 2014 » Google Summer of Code Scholarship, 2014 (5 out of 65) » 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Forum Participant, 2012 » Hans-Böckler Foundation Scholarship 2010 - 2015 » Karlsruhe Industry Scholarship, 2010 - 2014 (3 out of 50) » e-fellows.net, since 2010 » Talent im Land Baden-Württemberg Scholarship, 2006 - 2010 (50 out of 340)

Invited Talks & Tutorials

» UNCCD COP16, Riyadh (2024) » United Nation's COP29, Baku (2024) » United Nation's COP28, Dubai (2023) » United Nation's COP27, Sharm El-Shaikh (2022) » World Economic Forum, Davos (2022) » United Nation's COP26, Glasgow (2021) » United Nation's COP25, Madrid (2019) » United Nation's COP24, Katowice (2018) » ETH Blockchain Summer School, Zurich (2018) » United Nation's COP23, Bonn (2017) » PyCon.DE, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017) » VIZBI, Heidelberg, Germany (2016) » Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, USA (2015) » VIZBI, Cambridge, USA (2015) » ECCB, Strasbourg, France (2014) » The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC), Norwich, UK (2014) » European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK (2014) » Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany (2014)

Research Grants

» Prezenti Grant, 2024 » Valory Fondation, 2024 » Valory Fondation, 2023 » Celo, 2023 » Climate Collective Grant, 2022 » Filecoin Green Grant, 2022 » Coinbase Grant, 2022 » CCAI Innovation Grant, 2022 » Inter-American Development Bank Grant, 2019 » Demonstrator Grant from Climate-KIC, 2018 » OasisLab Fellowship, 2018 » UC Berkeley Fellowship, 2018 » Microsoft AI for Earth Grant, 2018, 2020 » Mercedes-Benz Research Grant, 2017 » NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant, 2016

Prizes

» Bonus Prize Winner, XPRIZE Rainforest, 2024 » BCG & Handelsblatt Vordenker:innen, 2022 » 1st Prize United Nations #Hack4Climate Hackathon, 2017 » 2nd Prize #HackSiliconValley Hackathon, 2016

Involvement: 9

Volunteering

World Economic Forum

Global Shaper

Aug 2017 - Aug 2024

Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum and part of the Munich Hub (2017-2020) and then the Zurich Hub (since 2020). Presented at Annual Meeting in Davos in 2022 and 2023.

Swiss Youth for Climate

COP Delegate

Nov 2019 - Jan 2022

Represented Swiss Youth for Climate at the United Nation's COP25 Summit in Madrid. Working on climate change awareness.

Creative Destruction Lab

Mentor (Scientist)

Aug 2021 - Present

The Climate Reality Project

Climate Leader

Oct 2019 - Present

Educated and trained by Vice-President and Nobel Prize Laureate Al Gore in Tokyo.

Association for Computing Machinery

Founder and Chair, Student Chapter Munich

May 2015 - Jun 2017

http://munichacm.de

Meetup

AI Education

Jun 2015 - Dec 2016

Event Organizer of "Deep Learning in Action" Speaker Series (200 - 400 attendees per meetup) http://munichacm.de/deeplearning/ and meetup.com/munichacm Founder of selfdrivingai.org - a speaker series with UberATG, Udacity, Mercedes-Benz and Bosch (200 attendees per event)

Broad Institute

Broad NextGen

Oct 2015 - May 2016

Organizing workshops and tutorials on data visualization and machine learning for the Broad community at MIT and Harvard.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Co-organizer of first refugee education conference at Harvard

Jan 2016 - Apr 2016

http://refugedu.github.io

Amnesty International

Regional Group

Sep 2009 - Jan 2014

Languages: 4

Cantonese(Native or bilingual)
German(Native or bilingual)
English(Full professional)
Portuguese(Elementary)