Paper collage of neural networks, market charts, books, and Mexico City architecture

About 略歴

Hi, I'm León Palafox.

I'm the Director of the AI Innovation Lab at GBM, where I lead large-scale personalization, recommender systems, embeddings, and experimentation platforms for retail investing.

I'm also a lecturer at Universidad Panamericana, where I teach Deep Learning and Machine Learning, and I teach Deep Reinforcement Learning at Colegio de Matemáticas Bourbaki. I write a regular column in El Financiero on AI, data strategy, and innovation.

Research 研究

Where data meets complex systems

Applied machine learning, pointed at whatever field has the hardest data.

Neuroscience — endovascular EEG signal quality at UCLA
Astrophysics — searching for exoplanets with deep learning
Planetary science — MarsNet: CNNs on HiRISE imagery of Mars
Finance — recommender systems and decision analytics for retail investors

More about research

30+ peer-reviewed papers — IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation, MNRAS, Computers & Geosciences, J. Neural Engineering
MarsNet drew NVIDIA coverage of the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory work

30+ papers · 4 fields

Publications

Academia 学界

UNAM → Tokyo → UCLA → Arizona

Trained across three continents, funded by Japan, seasoned in the American Southwest.

B.Eng, UNAM — Magna Cum Laude, Medalla Gabino Barreda (top of class)
M.Sc & PhD, University of Tokyo — ML for bioinformatics, Monbukagakusho (MEXT) scholar
Postdoc, UCLA School of Medicine — ML for neuroscience
Staff Scientist, University of Arizona — ML for planetary science

More about academia

PhD thesis: reverse-engineering gene regulatory networks with evolutionary and swarm methods
Today: Deep Learning and ML 2 at Universidad Panamericana; Deep RL at Colegio de Matemáticas Bourbaki

3 continents · MEXT scholar

Teaching today

Industry 産業

A decade of AI that ships

Models are the easy part; the job is products that move real money responsibly.

"Genome" — investor-profile projects powering personalization at GBM
Recommenders — KNN, ALS, and BM25 with embeddings, in production
Mechagodzilla — the experimentation layer that keeps it all honest
Previously — Novartis, Algorithia (Grupo Salinas), Banorte

More about industry

Built and led data science teams across banking, pharma, and retail investing
Stack: AWS pipelines, embedding services, experimentation and telemetry layers

GBM · Novartis · Salinas · Banorte

Full timeline

Timeline

2025.07 — Present AI Innovation Lab Director · GBM 2025.07 — Present Current role
2024.05 — 2025.07 AI Innovation Lab Director · Novartis 2024.05 — 2025.07
2022.10 — 2024.05 AI Head · Algorithia (Grupo Salinas) 2022.10 — 2024.05
2021.07 — 2022.10 Machine Learning Director · Banorte Financial Group 2021.07 — 2022.10
2018.05 — 2020.06 ML & Data Science Professor · Universidad Panamericana 2018.05 — 2020.06
2017.03 — 2018.05 Senior Data Science Consultant · Rich IT 2017.03 — 2018.05
2015.03 — 2017.03 Staff Scientist · University of Arizona 2015.03 — 2017.03
2014.04 — 2015.03 Postdoctoral Fellow · University of Arizona 2014.04 — 2015.03
2013.02 — 2014.04 Postdoctoral Fellow · UCLA School of Medicine 2013.02 — 2014.04
2012.08 — 2012.09 Research Intern · National Institute of Informatics 2012.08 — 2012.09
2010.03 — 2013.03 PhD, Machine Learning · The University of Tokyo 2010.03 — 2013.03
2008.04 — 2010.03 Master's, Information Technologies · The University of Tokyo 2008.04 — 2010.03
2007.04 — 2013.03 Monbukagakusho (MEXT) Scholarship Fellow · Government of Japan 2007.04 — 2013.03
2006.02 — 2007.02 Data & Business Analyst · San Luis Rassini 2006.02 — 2007.02
2000.09 — 2005.04 Bachelor's, Engineering (Magna Cum Laude) · UNAM 2000.09 — 2005.04