Projects & Patents
Companies and open-source software Scott has built or led, plus granted US patents as named inventor.
Projects
- Distributional
Founded in 2023, Distributional built AI testing and agent behavioral-analytics tools for Fortune 500 enterprises: automated testing and statistical analysis of LLM and agent trace data for continuous AI reliability. In July 2026 it made a hard pivot to Talaria Scientific (same company, same investors), refocusing on a multi-agent harness for computational science. Raised $30M from Andreessen Horowitz, Two Sigma Ventures, and others.
- SigOpt
An intelligent experimentation platform that accelerated and amplified the impact of modelers everywhere using Bayesian optimization to efficiently tune models and run experiments. Y Combinator W15. Raised approximately $17M from Andreessen Horowitz, Blumberg Capital with Two Sigma, In-Q-Tel, and others. Acquired by Intel in November 2020.
- ALE (Assembly Likelihood Evaluation)
A generic assembly likelihood evaluation framework for assessing the accuracy of genome and metagenome assemblies. ALE provides a reference-free quality metric using a probabilistic model of read placement. Originated during a DOE Joint Genome Institute practicum and published in Bioinformatics with 200+ citations.
- MOE (Metric Optimization Engine)
A global, black-box Bayesian optimization engine for real-world metric optimization. Built at Yelp, MOE implements state-of-the-art algorithms from Bayesian Global Optimization using Gaussian Processes and provides REST, Python, and C++ interfaces.
- Yelp Dataset Challenge
Yelp's flagship academic data competition, providing real-world business, review, and user data to students and researchers worldwide. Scott created, implemented, and directed the program at Yelp; it ran for multiple rounds beginning in 2013, expanded internationally in 2014, and has been used by over 100,000 students.
- sc932/resume — LaTeX Resume Template
An open-source LaTeX template for academic and industry resumes, with 500+ GitHub stars. The same repository also hosts Scott's longer academic CV and a structured markdown profile, all generated from a single source.
Patents
- Accelerated Tuning / Advanced Curtailment 5 patents
Systems and methods for accelerating hyperparameter tuning through early curtailment of unpromising trials in a machine learning optimization service.
- US 11,157,812 (2021)
- US 11,704,567 (2023)
- US 12,159,209 (2024)
- US 12,373,699 (2025)
- US 12,450,479 (2025)
Michael McCourt, Jackle-Spriggs, Ben-Cheng Hsu, Howey, Vance, Jim Blomo, Patrick Hayes, Scott C. Clark
- Anomaly Detection in Deployed Artificial Intelligence Applications 1 patent
Methods and systems for detecting anomalous behavior in production AI applications using statistical analysis of behavioral signals from inference traces.
Michael McCourt, Rachel Bourassa-Denis, Kyle Laban, Olivia Kim, Ian Dewancker, Bolong Cheng, Scott C. Clark
- Intelligent Optimization Platform 11 patents
Systems and methods for an intelligent experimentation and optimization platform that efficiently tunes parameters of expensive black-box models.
- US 10,217,061 (2019)
- US 10,282,237 (2019)
- US 10,379,913 (2019)
- US 10,445,150 (2019)
- US 10,565,025 (2020)
- US 10,607,159 (2020)
- US 11,163,615 (2021)
- US 11,301,781 (2022)
- US 11,709,719 (2023)
- US 12,141,667 (2024)
- US 12,236,287 (2025)
Patrick Hayes, Michael McCourt, Alexandra Johnson, George Ke, Scott C. Clark
- Multi-Solution Hyperparameter Tuning 2 patents
Systems and methods for generating multiple solution sets during hyperparameter tuning to support diverse model selection criteria.
Kelvin Tee, Michael McCourt, Patrick Hayes, Scott C. Clark
- Multiple Tuning Criteria Optimization 6 patents
Systems and methods for hyperparameter optimization across multiple competing objectives or constraints simultaneously.
- US 10,528,891 (2020)
- US 10,558,934 (2020)
- US 10,621,514 (2020)
- US 10,740,695 (2020)
- US 11,699,098 (2023)
- US 12,033,036 (2024)
Bolong Cheng, Olivia Kim, Michael McCourt, Patrick Hayes, Scott C. Clark, Jackle-Spriggs, Vance, Ben-Cheng Hsu, Frey