Camilo Pestana · PhD

AI leaderwho stillships.

Head of Data Science & ML at a $4.15B gaming company.

Built production fraud detection worth $230M+ in year one. Contributed to two FDA-cleared cardiac AI models. DARPA-funded PhD, 5 IEEE papers, and a side-stack of open-source agentic tooling and multiplayer games — written by the same person who owns the strategy.

See the work
Download CV
PhD in AI · UWADARPA5× IEEE2 FDA-cleared modelsHTB CTF: 2nd in AU
$500M+
Lifetime impact
$230M+ ROI fraud detection at VGW · Chevron · Globant enterprise + Artrya clinical AI.
2
FDA-cleared AI models
Stenosis estimation + plaque classification at Artrya. FDA 510(k) cleared, 2024.
30+
Projects shipped
Agentic tooling, AI security, medical AI, fraud detection, multiplayer games — public + private.
5
IEEE publications
CVPR 2021, WACV 2021, WACV 2022, 3DV 2022, IJCNN 2021 — adversarial ML and 3D texture attacks.
15
Years in tech
Backend Java (2011) → Globant enterprise (2014) → ML pivot (2017) → PhD (2022) → Head of DS & ML (2025).
~20
Direct + dotted reports
Unified AI/ML Engineering + Data Science into one enterprise function.
PhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global TalentPhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global TalentPhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global Talent
PhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global TalentPhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global TalentPhD in AI · UWADARPA ResearchFDA-cleared models5× IEEE publications$230M+ ROIHTB CTF · 2nd in AUHead of DS & MLAgentic AIAdversarial MLLLM SecurityComputer VisionAustralia Global Talent

Selected work

The portfolio, in one scroll.

Agentic tooling, AI security, medical imaging, multiplayer games, full-stack clones, research code — all shipped. Hover any card to see it in motion.

VGW
ml$230M+ ROI · Year 1

VGW Fraud Detection

Agentic + LLM + CV fraud system at $4.15B scale.

Agentic AILLMsComputer Vision
Case study in CV
Artrya
ml2 FDA-cleared models

Artrya — FDA Cardiac AI

Two FDA 510(k)-cleared models for coronary artery disease.

FDA 510(k)3D CNNCardiac imaging
Case study in CV
agent toolingLive agent observability

Tarsa

Live observability for Claude Code agents.

Live topologySession replayTranscript diffs
Open demoSource
ai securityDARPA-rooted · 12 modules

AI Security Course

PhD-grade red-team curriculum — open source.

12 modulesLocal-firstDARPA-rooted
Open source
education

AI Course

Self-guided AI fundamentals → modern GenAI.

FundamentalsDeep LearningGenAI
Open courseSource
agent tooling

AgentOffice HQ

AI agents that deliver real work, on demand.

Agentic workforceMulti-agentProduct
Open site
fullstack

Miro Clone

Realtime AI whiteboard. Generated from one prompt.

Yjs CRDTAES-GCM E2EEClaude-CLI backend
Source
fullstack

Facebook Clone

Full-stack social app shipped by Claude from one line.

Auth + feedsRealtimePrisma
Source
game

Alien Waves

Brotato-style arena co-op. AI-generated art + SFX.

Co-op multiplayerAI artGodot 4
Play on itch.io
game

Inkwell Dice

Balatro-inspired multiplayer dice deckbuilder.

DeckbuilderWebSocket multiplayerRoguelike
Play on itch.io
game

Slot Crawler

Slay the Spire–inspired slot roguelike.

RoguelikeSlot mechanicsGodot 4
Play on itch.io
ml314 ★ · Gov-funded $800K

COVID-19 Detector

Computer vision for X-ray diagnosis. 314★ on GitHub.

314 GitHub starsFeatured in mediaGovernment-funded
Source
fullstack

MDC Living

Premium modular spaces — marketing site.

Brand identityConversion-tunedNext.js
Visit site
agent tooling

BTC — Build Things with Claude

Rust CLI for multi-agent orchestration.

Multi-agentVisual QASandbox + remote
Source

The path

Engineer · researcher · operator.

Fifteen years across software engineering, ML research, medical AI, fraud detection, and adversarial security. Scroll horizontally — the pivots that mattered.

Career timeline

role01 / 12
2011

First engineering role

BinaryTools (Bogotá)

Backend Java for Univex — a secure platform used by Colombia's Counterintelligence School and National Army.

role02 / 12
2014

Globant: global enterprise

Colombia · USA · Australia

Engineering for Southwest Airlines (Netflix OSS microservices), National Geographic, Disney, ESPN, Royal Caribbean, Bank of Bogotá.

launch03 / 12
2017· pivot

Pivoted to Machine Learning

Years before AI went mainstream. Bet the career on it and never looked back.

startup04 / 12
2017

Co-founded SmartVision AI

Real-time roadside hazard detection with deep CNNs. Won the WA Ministry of Data Hackathon (40+ teams) and $21K SPURonWA innovation grant.

research05 / 12
2019· pivot

PhD + DARPA + Lecturing

University of Western Australia

DARPA-funded adversarial ML research. 5 IEEE papers (CVPR, WACV, 3DV, IJCNN). Cloud Computing lecturer.

launch06 / 12
2020

COVID-19 AI Detection

Led $800K AUD Colombian Government project for X-ray / CT anomaly detection. Featured in Colombian national media.

award07 / 12
2022· pivot

PhD awarded · Global Talent Visa

UWA · Australian Government

ACS 1962 Medal Finalist (top 5 PhD thesis in WA). Australian Global Talent Visa for outstanding expertise in AI.

launch08 / 12
2022

Artrya — FDA-cleared medical AI

Senior Data Scientist

Contributed to two FDA 510(k)-cleared AI models for coronary artery disease (stenosis estimation + plaque classification).

launch09 / 12
2024

VGW — Data Science Manager

$4.15B revenue · Perth

Built and shipped a production fraud detection system combining Agentic AI, LLMs, and CV — $230M+ USD ROI in year one.

award10 / 12
2025

HTB CTF: 2nd in Australia

Operation Blackout — 41st globally out of 796 teams. Solved Neural Detonator (the hardest AI/ML challenge) by reverse-engineering a hidden payload in a Keras model.

role11 / 12
2025· pivot

Head of Data Science & ML

VGW

Promoted to unify AI/ML Engineering and Data Science into one ~20-person enterprise function. Owning strategy, governance, and delivery across all AI/ML investment.

launch12 / 12
2025 — Present· pivot

Enterprise AI transformation

VGW

Modernising the platform from Databricks to AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock, Iceberg, MSK). Productionising agentic AI on Bedrock with Guardrails + LangGraph. Leading a ~20-person enterprise AI/ML + Data Science function.

Domains

Six regulated industries, one operator.

Gaming, defense, medtech, academia, AI security, oil & gas — shipping in each with the same hands.

Domains of Impact

Gaming

$230M+ ROI fraud detection. Agentic AI, LLMs, CV at $4.15B scale.

Defense

DARPA-funded adversarial ML research. Secure systems for military intel.

MedTech

Two FDA 510(k)-cleared AI models. 3D CNN cardiac imaging. Biosensor ML.

Academia

PhD in AI (UWA). 5 IEEE publications. Cloud Computing lecturer.

AI Security

HTB AI Red Teamer. 2nd in Australia CTF. Open-source security course.

Oil & Gas

First open-source DS/ML curriculum for Oil & Gas industry.

Stack

The toolbox.

What I reach for, day to day — battle-tested across regulated clinical, fintech, defense, and gaming workloads.

Agentic & GenAI

Productionising LangGraph + Bedrock Guardrails at VGW.

  • AWS Bedrock
  • Bedrock Guardrails
  • LangGraph
  • LangChain
  • DSPy
  • RAG
  • LLM Fine-tuning
  • Agentic Orchestration
  • Diffusion Models

Machine Learning

5 IEEE papers on adversarial ML; PyTorch since 2018.

  • PyTorch
  • TensorFlow
  • LightGBM
  • Scikit-learn
  • Active / Semi-supervised Learning

Computer Vision

Two FDA-cleared cardiac imaging models at Artrya.

  • CNNs
  • 3D CNNs
  • VLMs
  • Object Detection / OCR
  • Segmentation
  • Medical Imaging

AI Security

DARPA-funded PhD. HTB CTF 2nd in AU, 41st globally.

  • Adversarial ML
  • LLM Red Teaming
  • Prompt Injection Defence
  • Model Extraction
  • Data / Model Poisoning
  • Deepfake / KYC Robustness

MLOps & Data

Modernising Databricks → AWS at $4.15B scale.

  • SageMaker
  • MLflow
  • W&B
  • Airflow
  • Docker
  • Snowflake
  • Spark
  • Apache Iceberg
  • Kafka MSK
  • Databricks

Build & Ship

Tarsa, Inkwell Dice, this site — all Claude-Code-driven.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • React Three Fiber
  • Godot 4 / GDScript
  • Claude Code
  • Spec-driven Development

Research & recognition

Peer-reviewed receipts.

Five IEEE papers from the PhD years on adversarial ML, plus a shelf of recognitions across academia, industry, and security competitions.

IEEE publications

IEEE CVPR2021Assistive Signals for Deep Neural Network Classifiers↗IEEE 3DV2022Attacking Image Classifiers to Generate 3D Textures↗IEEE WACV2022Transferable 3D Adversarial Textures using End-to-end Optimization↗IEEE WACV2021Defense-friendly Images in Adversarial Attacks: Dataset and Metrics for Perturbation Difficulty↗IEEE IJCNN2021Adversarial Attacks and Defense on Deep Learning Classification Models using YCbCr↗

Awards & recognition

2025

Exceptional Impact Award, VGW

Revenue growth and shaping VGW's AI & Data strategy.

2025

HTB CTF: 2nd in Australia / 41st Globally

796 teams. Solved Neural Detonator (hardest AI/ML challenge).

2022

Australian Global Talent Visa

Granted for outstanding expertise in AI and Data Science.

2022

ACS 1962 Medal Finalist

Top 5 PhD thesis in Western Australia.

2021

Distinguished Alumni of the Year

Catholic University of Colombia.

2020

COVID-19 AI Detection Project

$800K AUD Colombian Government project. National media.

Certifications

AI Red Teamer Path

Hack The Box Academy · 2026

Co-developed with Google's Secure AI Framework. <43% completion rate.

Global Cyber Skills CTF: Operation Blackout

Hack The Box · 2025

2nd in Australia · 41st globally out of 796 teams.

Agentic AI Specialisation (7 courses)

DeepLearning.AI · 2025

Eval & Govern Agents · DSPy · AutoGen · LangGraph · LangChain.

RSNA Medical Imaging AI (Advanced)

RSNA · 2023

RSNA Medical Imaging AI (Foundational)

RSNA · 2023

ML in Production

DeepLearning.AI · 2022

AI for Medical Diagnosis

DeepLearning.AI · 2020

About

The short version.

15+
Years in tech
PhD
AI (UWA)
5
IEEE papers

I'm Camilo. Perth, Australia. Started writing Java for Colombia's National Army in 2011, pivoted to ML in 2017 before it was cool, finished a PhD on adversarial computer vision in 2022, and now run the central AI/ML & Data Science function (~20 people) at VGW — a $4.15B gaming company.

Day job is C-suite advisory, AI governance, and shipping production systems at scale (fraud detection, agentic AI on Bedrock, modernising Databricks → AWS). Off-hours, I ship things: agent observability tooling, multiplayer games on Godot, full-stack apps built end-to-end with Claude Code, an open-source AI security course used by red-teamers.

Same person designs the strategy and writes the code.

That's the whole pitch.

Perth, AustraliaGlobal Talent VisaAustralian + Colombian

Say hi

The fastest way is email.

Roles, collaborations, advisory, interesting research, weird ideas — all welcome.

camilo@pestana.airoles · advisory · collabsDownload CV
GitHub · @elcronosLinkedInitch.io · games