“CV”

Industry Experience

• 2025 - Present: Co-Founder & CEO
  • ScamAI (scam.ai), San Francisco, CA
  • Founded to combat the societal harms of AI misuse — preserving the trust pillar of human society by detecting deepfakes, fraudulent GenAI content, and AI-manipulated media
  • Built an all-in-one AI trust platform: deepfake detection, voice clone detection, document forgery analysis, age estimation, and identity verification
  • Raised $2.5M; Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator (UC Berkeley)
  • SOC 2 Type II compliant; serving financial services, dating/social, media, government, and insurance sectors
  • Published 8+ papers on deepfake detection benchmarking, LLM-based detection, and adversarial robustness
• 2023 - 2025: Senior Research Scientist
  • Meta, Menlo Park, CA
  • Meta AI department (later Meta Superintelligence Lab)
  • AI Personalization: Pioneered work on personalized interest modeling and memory to make AI interactions more human and contextually aware
  • Large-Scale Recommendation Systems: Feed ranking and Messenger recommendation systems at Meta’s scale

Education

• Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Duke University, NC, USA, 2023
  • Applied Machine Learning Lab — Advisors: Prof. Leslie Collins & Prof. Jordan Malof
  • Focus: deep learning for inverse design, metamaterial design, energy applications, and remote sensing
• M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Duke University, NC, USA, 2020
• B.S. in Applied Physics (First Class Honors)
  • The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR, China, 2018

Selected Publications

Nearly 1,000 citations across 30+ publications at top venues including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, AAAI, WACV. Full list on Google Scholar or publications page.

• Ren, S., et al. (2025). Can Multi-modal (reasoning) LLMs work as deepfake detectors? [12 citations]
• Ren, S., et al. (2025). Do deepfake detectors work in reality? Proc. 4th Workshop on Security Implications of Deepfakes. [7 citations]
• Ren, S., et al. (2024). Segment anything, from space? WACV 2024. [123 citations]
• Khatib, O., Ren, S., et al. (2022). Learning the physics of all-dielectric metamaterials with deep Lorentz neural networks. Advanced Optical Materials. [63 citations]
• Ren, S., et al. (2022). Inverse deep learning methods and benchmarks for artificial electromagnetic material design. Nanoscale. [61 citations]
• Ren, S., et al. (2022). Automated extraction of energy systems information from remotely sensed data. Applied Energy. [60 citations]
• Khatib, O., Ren, S., et al. (2021). Deep Learning the Electromagnetic Properties of Metamaterials — A Comprehensive Review. Advanced Functional Materials. [230 citations]
• Deng, Y., Ren, S., et al. (2021). Neural-adjoint method for the inverse design of all-dielectric metasurfaces. Optics Express. [116 citations]
• Ren, S., Padilla, W., & Malof, J. (2020). Benchmarking Deep Inverse Models over time, and the Neural-Adjoint method. NeurIPS 2020. [86 citations]
• Yip, C.T., …, Ren, S., et al. (2020). Direct Evidence of Void-Induced Structural Relaxations in Colloidal Glass Formers. Physical Review Letters. [46 citations]

Teaching

• Fall 2020: Teaching Assistant — ECE 681: Pattern Classification and Recognition Technology, Duke University
• Fall 2019 / Spring 2020: Teaching Assistant — ECE 555: Probability for ECE, Duke University

Skills

• ML/AI: PyTorch, TensorFlow, deep learning, computer vision, generative AI, deepfake detection
• Engineering: Python, C/C++, distributed systems, REST/gRPC APIs
• Leadership: Fundraising, product strategy, team building, startup operations
• Languages: English, Mandarin, Cantonese

Scholarships & Awards

• Outstanding Master Student Award, Duke ECE (2 out of 130), 2020
• Hong Kong Government PhD Fellowship Scheme (Declined), 2018
• Hong Kong Government Outstanding Scholarship ($12,000/y x 2y), 2017-2018
• Hong Kong APEC Scholarship (<1%), 2017-2018
• Prof. Chau Wai-yin Memorial Scholarship (1 out of 200), 2017
• Global Student Leaders Award, PolyU (5 out of 5000), 2017
• Hong Kong Government Reaching Out Award (<5%), 2016

Service & Leadership

• Co-Founder & CEO, ScamAI — combating AI misuse at scale, 2025 - present
• Technology 4 Development, Cambodia, Summer 2017
  • Solar panel and LED installations for rural primary schools with NGO “Young People Do”
• President, Chinese Mainland Students’ Association, HK PolyU, 2015-2016
  • Led 14 cabinet members; organized 25+ events for 1,200+ student members