PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Peter O'Connor

Peter O'Connor is a machine learning researcher and founder whose work on spiking and biologically plausible neural networks led to a NeurIPS 2019 honorable mention. He studied electrical engineering at McGill and neural systems at ETH Zurich's Institute of Neuroinformatics, then began a PhD in Max Welling's group at the University of Amsterdam in 2015. His papers include a 2013 spiking deep belief network, Sigma Delta Quantized Networks at ICLR 2017, and the 2019 Gradient-Isolated Learning paper with Sindy Löwe and Bastiaan Veeling, which received an Outstanding New Directions Paper Honorable Mention at NeurIPS 2019. A senior research scientist at Brain Corporation from 2019, he worked on vision-based navigation for floor-cleaning robots. Since 2022, he is co-founder, CEO and CTO of Eagle Eyes Search, whose Mirada software searches drone footage with computer vision for search and rescue teams.

Now at
Eagle Eyes Search
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2009–2012

    Degrees at McGill and ETH Zurich

    He earns a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at McGill University in December 2009. In August 2012, he completes a master's in Neural Systems and Computation at ETH Zurich's Institute of Neuroinformatics, with a thesis on a real-time sensory-fusion model that uses a deep belief network with spiking neurons.

  2. 2013

    A spiking deep belief network

    Together with Daniel Neil, Shih-Chii Liu, Tobi Delbruck and Michael Pfeiffer, he publishes "Real-Time Classification and Sensor Fusion with a Spiking Deep Belief Network" in Frontiers in Neuroscience in 2013. The paper maps an offline-trained deep belief network onto an event-driven spiking network that classifies MNIST digits in real time from a silicon retina and fuses input from a silicon cochlea.

  3. January 2015

    A PhD with Max Welling

    In January 2015, he starts a PhD in Max Welling's group at the QUVA Lab, University of Amsterdam. His project, Deep Spiking Neural Networks, applies deep learning methods to spiking neural networks, with robotics as the motivation.

  4. 2016–2019

    Sigma Delta Quantized Networks

    In February 2016, he and Welling post the preprint "Deep Spiking Networks," which implements backpropagation with event-based neurons. Their "Sigma Delta Quantized Networks," accepted to ICLR 2017, has each layer send a discretized form of its change in activation to the next layer, which could cut at least an order of magnitude from the cost of processing video on suitable hardware. In 2019, he, Efstratios Gavves and Welling publish "Training a Spiking Neural Network with Equilibrium Propagation" at the Twenty-Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics.

  5. March 2019

    Senior research scientist at Brain Corporation

    In March 2019, he becomes a senior research scientist at Brain Corporation, a robotics AI startup that employed him as a scientific programmer from 2013 to 2015 and as an intern from 2017 to 2018. His work there is on vision-based navigation systems for autonomous mobile robots that clean floors in department stores.

  6. 2019

    A NeurIPS honorable mention

    With Sindy Löwe and Bastiaan Veeling, he writes "Putting An End to End-to-End: Gradient-Isolated Learning of Representations," which splits a deep network into a stack of gradient-isolated modules, each trained with the InfoNCE bound and without end-to-end backpropagation. The paper receives an Outstanding New Directions Paper Honorable Mention at NeurIPS 2019.

  7. 2022

    Founding Eagle Eyes Search

    He founds Eagle Eyes in 2022, after more than ten years in robotics in which he led perception for thousands of autonomous retail robots. He holds a PhD in machine learning.

  8. As of October 2026

    CEO and CTO of Eagle Eyes

    He is co-founder, CEO and CTO of Eagle Eyes Search, where he leads R&D, computer vision and the drone integrations. The company ships its first product in 2024, and its Mirada software searches drone video with computer vision and puts findings on a map while the aircraft is still flying; more than 130 search and rescue teams, fire halls and sheriffs' offices are customers.

Career

  1. Since 2022Eagle Eyes SearchCo-founder, CEO and CTO
  2. 2013–2018Brain CorporationScientific programmer, Intern

Education

  1. From 2015University of AmsterdamPhD
  2. 2012ETH ZurichMaster's in Neural Systems and Computation
  3. 2009McGill UniversityBachelor's degree in electrical engineering

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes ETH Zurich. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes ETH Zurich. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes ETH Zurich. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes McGill University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Peter O'Connor yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. CV - Peter O'Connor docs.google.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Peter O'Connor's Research Site petered.github.io. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Real-time classification and sensor fusion with a spiking deep belief network pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. [1611.02024] Sigma Delta Quantized Networks arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Training a Spiking Neural Network with Equilibrium Propagation proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. [1905.11786] Putting An End to End-to-End: Gradient-Isolated Learning of Representations arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. NeurIPS 2019 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Top 25 Spotlight - Eagle Eyes Search - New Ventures BC newventuresbc.com. Checked 22 October 2026.