Tristan Trébaol

I like modelling

My research interests lie broadly at the intersection of machine learning and physics.

During my PhD, I developed a probabilistic graphical model of lung health to improve wellbeing and life expectancy in cystic fibrosis. I was supervised by Dr. John Winn (Microsoft Research) and Prof. Andres Floto (Cambridge University).

At the EPFL CV Lab, in collaboration with Neural Concept, I trained a geodesic CNN that emulates hydrofoil physics 3,000x faster than traditional simulation software. This work has since been formally licensed for commercial use to accelerate industrial R&D.

More recently, I studied protein language models, scaling transformers, and JEPA architectures.

Favourite papers:

I like writing code (pre AI era)

I joined Gitstart (YC19) in 2021 as the 4th engineer. We built hybrid coding agents for clients like Google. I journaled my daily learnings for a year and also shipped open-source contributions in Elixir and Typescript.

I believe that TDD is drastically underrated.

I started coding at 17 when I enrolled for CS50 (Harvard CS) with two high school friends.

I like building hardware

In 2018, I co-founded a space mission from my kitchen table in Switzerland. We raised 2.5M CHF from the European Space Agency and successfully launched two satellites into Low Earth Orbit. I spoke about it on radio, in print, and on video. The team's efforts led to the DPhi Space spin-off. To ensure the project's long-term legacy, we established an association of space enthusiasts that remains active today. The next launch is scheduled for October 2027.

In my EPFL student time (2015-2017), I spent most of my time at the makerspace. For example, we built the world's first radio-controlled bifoiler (picture below). It became the fastest boat in the history of the Hydrocontest international student competition. I was the pilot for a few races.

We also built a freight boat prototype that carried 200 kg of weight. It won the contest in the heavyweight category.

Before the boats and satellites, I built a racing quadcopter by sourcing parts directly from China. My electronic nerd friend didn't tell me it was super over-engineered (it goes to 120km/h in 1s). I limited it to 1% of the full power and it was finally controllable.

I like challenging myself to support cystic fibrosis

with brother and friends

2023 Ran a half ironman with a group of friends
2021 Swam across Lake Geneva from Lausanne to Evian
2018 Ran an ironman with my brother — placed on the podium for my age category

I like sailing

I grew up in Brittany, France, where I spent my free time sailing competitively. By the time I was 15, I had clocked 10,000 hours of practice. This led me to win two world championships with my brother.

In 2015, I was invited to the French chapter of the Red Bull Foiling Generation. It taught me the hard way how to sail on foils. My foiling journey continued on Lake Geneva with the Flying Phantom, ETF26, and 69F.

In 2025, I led the Cambridge University Yacht Club to a 7-0 victory against Oxford in the Varsity match.