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Lucas-Andreï Thil

PhD Candidate in AI · École Polytechnique · LIX

Palaiseau · France

I work on representation learning, world models, and prognostics for complex systems, at the intersection of deep learning and operations research. My PhD is part of the ORAILIX group at LIX, with IRT SystemX and Safran Tech, on probabilistic estimation of temporal representations in degrading systems. Before the PhD I cofounded Autoderm (medical AI for dermatology) and built Rust infrastructure for inference at the edge.

Education

2024 – present

PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence

École Polytechnique, LIX, ORAILIX group · Palaiseau, France

Thesis: Probabilistic Estimation of Temporal Representations in Complex Systems. Supervised by Prof. Jesse Read, in collaboration with IRT SystemX and Safran Tech under the JNI3 program. Focus: representation learning, uncertainty quantification, world models, health indicators, prognostics under realistic degradation and maintenance.

2021 – 2023

MSc Artificial Intelligence

DACS, Universiteit Maastricht · Netherlands

Master thesis: Navigating WebAI, training agents to complete web tasks with large language models and reinforcement learning. Coursework in deep learning, multi-agent systems, NLP, and knowledge representation.

2018 – 2021

BSc Data Science & Knowledge Engineering

Universiteit Maastricht · Netherlands

Experience

2024 – present

PhD Candidate · École Polytechnique × IRT SystemX × Safran Tech

Palaiseau, France

  • Self-supervised representation learning and world models for turbofan degradation and other safety-critical systems.
  • Built the TurboSens turbofan substrate, an interactive simulator and dataset with paired ground-truth latent state, used internally and in published work.
  • Co-designed and ran an MSc-level Reinforcement Learning challenge on turbofan degradation environments (Jan to Mar 2026, École Polytechnique) with Jesse Read and Jérémie Decock.
PyTorchJAXRustRL / world modelsJEPA
2023 – 2024

Cofounder · Autoderm

Barcelona, Spain

  • B2B medical AI search for dermatology, distributed to hospitals, insurers, and telemedicine.
  • Trained image-to-text models on a curated 3M-image database; certified as a Class I CE-marked medical device (FEU, MDHR UK), granted breakthrough device designation by the US FDA; serving 270k+ users.
  • Took the system from research prototype to product: model training, inference infrastructure, and clinical workflows.
RustPythonPyTorchPostgresDocker
2019 – 2023

Rust Engineer · IoE Corp (formerly Quantum1Net)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain · Hybrid

  • Founding engineer on a decentralised mesh platform (in the vein of ROS) for running inference at the edge.
  • Owned end-to-end architecture across orchestration, data lakes, cryptography, and asynchronous processing.
  • Shipped optimised models on embedded targets (bare metal, low memory) and integrated TensorFlow Lite, C, and Wasm runtimes into the platform OS.
RustWasmTF LiteEmbedded

Selected Publications

Full list on Google Scholar. Several follow-up papers using TurboSens are under review at other venues.

Talks & Conferences

2025

MIMAR 2025

Paper presentation on uncertainty quantification for turbofan engines.

2022

CES Las Vegas

IoT Evolution Product of the Year award by TCM.

Supervision

Ongoing

Eya Bradai

École Polytechnique

Deep learning methods for complex system degradation modeling.

Ongoing

Bahaeddine Abdessalem

École Polytechnique

Deep learning methods for complex system degradation modeling.

Awards & Distinctions

2026

🥈 Second place · Hack the World(s)

With team Piaget: Wiring the Fly Brain into a Hierarchical World Model. Under the patronage of Philippe Baptiste and sponsored by Yann LeCun on the JEPA architecture.

2026

Finalist · Concours des Nouvelles Avancées

For The Last Transmission, on the theme “Intelligences?”. Announced 20 May at the Panthéon, Paris.

2019

First prize · IBM Quantum Challenge

With Maastricht University: applied hybrid-quantum solution in generative design, culminating in a 3D-printed bike structure designed on IBM QX.

to 2017

France national finswimming team

Three national records, two international medals; 4th at the 2017 World Championship in Tomsk, Siberia.

Selected Projects

2026

TurboSens

A turbofan substrate for representation learning, prognostics, and reinforcement learning, with paired ground-truth latent state. Used in the ICML 2026 RLxF paper; multiple follow-up papers under review.

2026

Wiring the Fly Brain into a Hierarchical World Model

JEPA world model trained on spikes from the Drosophila connectome (FlyWire), embodied in NeuroMechFly v2 inside MuJoCo. Coupled along the connectome’s own sensory → integration → motor flow.

2021

Navigating WebAI

Training language-model agents to complete web tasks via reinforcement learning, in a custom simulated browser environment.

2020

Quantum Post-Pruning

Combatting overfitting in classical decision tree classifiers with quantum-assisted post-pruning.

Skills

Research
Representation learning · world models · self-supervised learning (JEPA, EB-JEPA) · reinforcement learning · uncertainty quantification · prognostics & health management · inverse problems
Programming
Python (PyTorch, JAX, NumPy, scikit-learn) · Rust · C / C++ · JavaScript · SQL · Wasm
Infrastructure
Docker · Postgres · AWS / GCP · HPC / SLURM · TensorFlow Lite · bare-metal / embedded targets
Languages
French (native) · English (fluent) · Spanish (conversational)

References

Available on request. Primary references: Prof. Jesse Read (LIX, PhD advisor), Prof. Sonia Vanier (ORAILIX), Dr. Rim Kaddah (IRT SystemX), Dr. Guillaume Doquet (Safran Tech), Dr. Mirela Popa and Dr. Gerasimos “Jerry” Spanakis (Maastricht).