Equinox Ventures

Brendan O'Brien

Head of Artificial Intelligence

At Equinox

At Equinox Ventures, Brendan combines his expertise as a scientist with his skill as a software engineer for developing a range of applications driven by Artificial Intelligence. Harnessing his expertise in vision, Brendan has guided the development of Ocula, our health-tech mobile app aimed at early, non-invasive, detection of injury to the nervous system such as concussion. Similarly, his experience with histopathology and histochemistry of the brain has proven valuable for the development of Labflow.

Before Equinox

Prior to launching his career in software engineering, Brendan led a long academic career seeking to understand how the brain processes visual information. To this end, his work spanned the spectrum in visual neuroscience from analysing gene expression in single retinal neurons to uncovering new pathways for visual information flow in the brain. His work in visual neuroscience has had broad impact with his publications receiving over 1000 citations globally.

Quick Fire Questions:

What are your top 3 most used emojis?

🤔 🤣 ❤️

‍Favourite travel highlight or destination so far?

As a postdoc, I lived and worked in Germany for three years, travelling far and wide when I had the time. I would love to go back and enjoy the rich cultural history and diversity again. My next goal, however, is to spend some time in Japan.

Do you have a favourite book?

Illusion, by Richard Bach. Illusions is a wonderful short novel, that I read over and over again when I need to centre myself. It reminds me that perspective is everything and all is not what it seems.

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Outside Equinox

Outside of his professional life, Brendan's main focus revolves around his family, dedicating a significant portion of his time to his children, Liam and Willow. He enjoys indulging in hobbies that involve technological tinkering, particularly creating apps, including a specialised device for his home that measures room temperature and humidity, incorporating a small camera as well. Brendan's interests extend into the world of BattleBots, where enthusiasts create robots for competitive combat. Encouraged by a close friend heavily involved in BattleBots, Brendan built an app to assist the organisation with managing their events. Additionally, soccer has been a longtime passion for Brendan, having played it during his high school days and sharing the sport with his son when they lived in the US.