Luke Farritor

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Luke Farritor (born 2001/2002) [1] is an American software engineer who is currently serving at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). [2] [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Luke is the son of Shane Farritor, a University of Nebraska–Lincoln professor from Ravenna. [4] Luke interned at SpaceX in 2023. [5] That year, he won a $250,000 prize from the Vesuvius Challenge for using artificial intelligence to decipher one of the Herculaneum Papyri scrolls. [6] [7] [8] Farritor's AI program segmented images of the scroll into 100 pixels by 100 pixels to determine the characters written in ink. [5] [9] [10]

Farritor studied computer science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, before dropping out to become a Thiel Fellow in 2024. [11] [12]

Career

Farritor was appointed to the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025, and is among a group of 19–24 year olds at the agency. [13] Farritor currently holds a General Services Administration (GSA) email and A-suite level clearance, with access to all GSA physical spaces and IT systems, according to Wired. [13] He is also an executive engineer in the office of the secretary of Health and Human Services. [1]

References

  1. 1 2 Swan, Jonathan; Schleifer, Theodore; Haberman, Maggie; Conger, Kate; Mac, Ryan; Ngo, Madeleine (February 3, 2025). "Inside Musk's Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government". The New York Times . Retrieved February 4, 2025.
  2. "Farritor named co-winner of $700,000 prize for ID'ing scroll passages | Nebraska Today". news.unl.edu. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  3. "Musk visits and asserts growing influence at GSA". Nextgov.com. January 30, 2025. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  4. Nebraska tech prodigy reportedly joins Elon Musk's DOGE project
  5. 1 2 Steinberg, Julia. "The 22-Year-Old Who Unlocked the Secrets of Ancient Rome". www.thefp.com. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  6. "How AI is revealing lost secrets of the Roman Empire". Science. February 3, 2025. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  7. Henshall, Will (October 21, 2023). "Inside the AI-Powered Race to Decode Ancient Roman Scrolls". TIME. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  8. Wade, Nicholas (October 12, 2023). "Scrolls That Survived Vesuvius Divulge Their First Word". The New York Times . Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  9. "First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by 21yo computer science student". scrollprize.org. Vesuvius Challenge. October 12, 2023. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  10. Sample, Ian (October 12, 2023). "Researchers use AI to read word on ancient scroll burned by Vesuvius". The Guardian. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  11. Dunker, Chris (February 5, 2024). "UNL student shares grand prize for translating scroll buried at Pompeii". JournalStar.com. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  12. "Thiel Foundation Announces Next Thiel Fellow Class". Archived from the original on November 29, 2024. Retrieved February 3, 2025.
  13. 1 2 Elliott, Vittoria. "The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved February 3, 2025.