About us
1. Founder, Jonah Lynch
Since childhood, Jonah pursued a renaissance ideal: competence in many fields, endless curiosity. He began his search for knowledge as a Physics student at McGill university, and then broadened into humanistic interests, including studies in philosophy, a doctorate in theology, service as a priest, and a second Ph.D. in artificial intelligence applied to ancient history. His thesis was entitled “Method and Intelligence: Digital approaches to memory and communication in historiography”. He resides in Italy and divides his time between scientific research, consulting, and teaching.
2. The road to Innovation Lens
Since age seven he has been a computer programmer. His interest in technology led him to write a best-selling book about technology and human relationships entitled The Scent of Lemons. He has given lectures in prestigious settings around the world, including Oxford University, MIT, the University of Chicago, the JRC, l’Accademia Ambrosiana and the Catholic University of Milan.
Jonah has dedicated much of his career to education, and knows firsthand how difficult and how important it is to choose one's research topics well. He holds an M.Ed in Science Education from the George Washington University, and has taught at all levels, including 'Elements of statistics, probabilistic reasoning, and R' at the University of Milan-Bicocca.
He also has a longstanding interest in art. He has collaborated with musicians, mosaic artists and painters, and has directed several documentary films and museum exhibits. Recently he collaborated on two AI-based art projects, the Compos[t]ing project sponsored by the European Union JRC, and an AI-based translation of Shane Guffogg’s paintings into music, which was performed at the Venice Biennale in 2024.
Jonah's data science highlights include creating an algorithm to predict hospital emergency room overflow, developing visualization software for knowledge graphs that represent scholarly discourse, and using language models to map the gods of Ancient Mesopotamia. These explorations led to the algorithm at the heart of innovationlens.org, a tool to help scientists identify promising topics for future research.