# Esmat Sahak

> Founding AI Product Engineer @ Lightfield

Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/esmat

Hi, I am Esmat Sahak, currently a Founding AI Product Engineer at Lightfield. I hold both Master of Applied Science (MASc) and Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc) degrees in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) from the University of Toronto. 

I want my career to focus on using AI to develop solutions to empower underprivileged and under-resourced communities. I am specifically interested in two directions:

1) Education: I want to ensure children growing up in low-income communities or developing nations are able to prioritize their education and have access to high-quality education. I also want to help develop sustainable pipelines that will enable them to convert their education into career opportunities.

2) Economics: I want to learn about income generation methods to help people earn money without depending on welfare systems. An example of this is the microcredit, which fuels economic empowerment and is an effective form of financial aid. 

My long-term vision is for the most brilliant minds in the world to use their talents to work on pressing philanthropic problems to help vulnerable populations around the world. Feel free to reach out and connect if this is the area of work you are currently focused on.

I am also interested in AI interpretability research, specifically looking into the black box of LLMs, and uncovering insights on how LLMs learn. I believe this line of work is extremely relevant, given that it allows us to build more safe and transparent AI systems and develop more energy efficient and capable AI models.

## Work Experience
### Founding AI Product Engineer @ Lightfield
Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area
Website: https://lightfield.app/

### Machine Learning Engineer Intern @ Autodesk
Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Digital Experience & Customer Empowerment (DXC) Machine Learning Team

### Data Science Intern @ Roche
Jan 2023 – Jan 2023 | Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
MSAT and Engineering Team (PTT)

### Student Researcher @ University of Toronto
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Third Space Research Group
Advisors: Ishtiaque Ahmed, Mohammad Rifat
Thesis: Designing Automatic and Contextual Feedback Systems for Online Hate Speech

### Student Researcher @ University of Toronto
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Signal Processing and Oral Communication Lab (SPOClab)
Advisors: Frank Rudzicz, Zining Zhu
Paper: A State-Vector Framework for Dataset Effects (EMNLP 2023)

### Software Development Engineer Intern @ Amazon
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Amazon Advertising
Advertising Localization (AdLoc) Team

### Embedded Software Developer @ Cognitive Systems Corp.
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Data Science Division
Research & Development Team

### Student Researcher @ Vector Institute
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Advisors: Sedef Kocak, Elham Dolatabadi
Paper: Using Social Media to Help Understand Long COVID Patient Reported Health Outcomes: A Natural Language Processing Approach (Journal of Medical Internet Research)

### Software Developer In Test @ Oracle
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation

### Research Intern @ Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Adaptive Neurorehabilitation Systems Lab
Advisor: Jose Zariffa

### Technical Systems Analyst @ RBC
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Enterprise Technology Digital Workflow Solutions (ETDWS)


## Education
### Master of Applied Science - MASc in Artificial Intelligence
University of Toronto

### Bachelor of Applied Science - BASc in Engineering Science
University of Toronto


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/esmatsahak

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Source: https://flows.cv/esmat
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/esmat/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-05