Ananya D. (she/her)
Founder and Chief Executive Officer · Builder · AI Researcher

Identity. Synthesis. Trust.

I'm Ananya D. — founder of Pulse AI, a company building identity video infrastructure that pipelines a single biometric asset through generative models to produce controllable, personalized synthetic video at scale. We sit directly on the boundary between utility and consequence — where deepfake technology meets legitimate communication infrastructure.

See What I'm Building → My Research → Download CV

I'm always open to collaboration — feel free to reach out.

Ananya D.
Trustworthy AI ✦ Digital Identity ✦ Human-AI Collaboration ✦ AI Governance ✦ Synthetic Media ✦ LLM Evaluation ✦ Trustworthy AI ✦ Digital Identity ✦ Human-AI Collaboration ✦ AI Governance ✦ Synthetic Media ✦ LLM Evaluation ✦
The Problem

AI passes the test.
Then fails the job.

That gap is what I've built my research and my company around. It's not a niche academic puzzle — it's the core trust crisis of our moment.

Lab → Deployment
Benchmarks lie.
AI systems ace evaluations designed for labs, then break in ways nobody measured. We're testing for what's easy, not what matters.
Synthetic ≠ Fake
Identity is broken.
Generative AI has made it impossible to trust what you see, hear, or read online. Detection tools are chasing symptoms. Nobody's fixing the system.
Policies ≠ Practice
Governance is theatre.
Regulated industries have thorough AI accountability documents and almost no AI accountability. The gap between what's written and what's deployed is wide — and growing.
Why me
I study the failures. I deploy into them.
Most people in this space do one or the other — study AI systems from the outside, or build them without looking at what breaks. I do both. I've spent years studying where and how AI systems fail trust. Now I'm deploying directly into those failure modes — which means my company has diagnostic depth most builders don't have, and my research has ground truth most academics can't access.
"I didn't stumble into this problem. I've spent years mapping exactly where AI breaks trust — and now I'm building the infrastructure to fix it."
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

What I'm building

🎬
Live
Pulse AI — pulseai.pro
AI-generated personalized video for high-value outbound sales. Upload one headshot, deploy personalized video across your entire pipeline — without recording each message manually.

Built on the boundary I've spent years researching: where synthetic identity meets legitimate communication. I'm building this category with the accountability infrastructure it's missing.
Synthetic VideoGTMB2BIdentityInfrastructure
Background

Where I've been

Five years of building systems across enterprise, research, and early-stage — from Infosys and Shell to UC Santa Cruz's AI labs. Each role sharpened a different part of what I'm building now.

Research Track
Graduate Teaching Assistant
University of California, Santa Cruz
Sep 2021 – Jun 2023·1 yr 10 mos
Led sections, designed problem sets, and mentored graduate students across database systems and programming courses.
TeachingDatabasesPython
Industry & Founder Track
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Stealth
June 2026 – Present
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Asteris AI
2025 – 2026
Explored building automation infrastructure for FinOps. Validated the problem space, decided not to pursue it further.
Founder and Chief Executive OfficerFinOpsAutomation
Founding Lead Software Automation Engineer
MetaJungle
Jul 2023 – Nov 2023·Missouri, US
Employee zero on the engineering side — built a blockchain-integrated NFT indexing and marketplace platform from scratch, making every architectural decision under production pressure with zero safety net.
My first founding role. Learned that "move fast" and "build right" aren't opposites — they just require being very honest about which decisions are reversible.
Founding EngineerBlockchainEthereum
Software Automation Engineer Intern
Inovalon
Jun 2022 – Aug 2022·Maryland, US · Remote
Built automation frameworks for healthcare data pipelines — working inside a regulated industry where every pipeline failure has a patient at the end of it.
First real encounter with the accountability gap in regulated AI: the documentation said one thing, the deployment did another. I've been thinking about that gap ever since.
Healthcare DataAPIsRegulated Industry
Software AI Automation Engineer
Shell
Aug 2019 – Aug 2021·2 yrs · Bengaluru, India
Engineered scalable, reliable automation frameworks for enterprise-scale web platforms at a global energy company — building systems that had to work across teams, time zones, and edge cases nobody documented.
Enterprise ScaleInfrastructureAutomation
Technology Analyst & Software Automation Engineer
Infosys
Dec 2015 – Jul 2019·3 yrs 8 mos
Built scalable automation frameworks for healthcare platforms across a 3.5-year tenure — my foundation in understanding how large, complex systems serving real people can be made reliable and accountable at scale.
Healthcare PlatformsJavaAutomation
Projects

What I've Built So Far

Systems and products I've designed, built, or shipped — across automation, AI, and infrastructure.

Volunteer & Community

Giving back

Work beyond the job description — communities, causes, and people I've shown up for.

🌱
Computer Society of India
Chairperson
Directed and coordinated key initiatives across teams
Jul 2014 – Jul 2015 · 1 yr 1 mo
🤝
IEEE
Chairperson
Led cross-functional initiatives and institutional events, overseeing strategy, execution, and coordination
May 2012 – Jul 2015 · 3 yrs 3 mos
A little more me

When I'm not building

🎹
Classical Piano
I am a trained classical Pianist.
▦
Chess
Chess teaches me that patience and positioning matter more than rushing to move.
🎾
Tennis
Tennis is where I go to get out of my head
🎨
Oil Painting
Canvas oil painting is my sanity. I don't know where I'd be without it honestly.
💃
Classical Dance
I am a well trained classical dancer, just a part of how I move through the world
🍳
Cooking & Baking
I like to try preparing different types of biryani, and occasionally haute cuisine and green baking.
Let's Talk

Happy to chat

Whether you're an accelerator, an investor, a professor thinking about the same questions, or a potential collaborator — my inbox is genuinely open. Chai optional but encouraged.

For Accelerators & Investors
I'm building accountable AI infrastructure. If you back deep-tech founders with genuine domain expertise, let's talk.
For Faculty & Research Collaborators
I have deployment data and open questions that I can't answer alone. If your research overlaps with mine, it would be awesome to find out how we can collaborate.
For Potential Users & Partners
If you work in a regulated industry and are wrestling with AI accountability, I want to hear your story — and you should probably know about what I'm building.
founderpulsepro@gmail.comFastest — I read everything
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Download CVEmail adas13@ucsc.edu to request
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Google ScholarPublications & citation record
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GitHubOpen-source toolkits & research code
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LinkedInProfessional background
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Twitter / XResearch threads & commentary
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