About

Dr. Donald J. Patterson
Curriculum Vitae / C.V. / Resumé of Donald J. Patterson (12/5/2025)

Hello World! I’m an entrepreneur and computer scientist who strives to develop great people and big ideas.

In summer 2023, I left academia to found Blockpliance, a risk compliance and anti-money laundering fintech startup that helped financial institutions responsibly engage with the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Blockpliance was acquired by LedgerLink in February 2025, where I now serve as VP of Machine Learning and AI.

Before my entrepreneurial chapter, I spent two decades in academia. I was a tenured professor at UC Irvine from 2005 to 2015, continued as visiting faculty through 2024, and remain a project scientist there today. I also taught in the Math and Computer Science Department at Westmont College in Santa Barbara from 2015 to 2024. Additionally, I serve as a Board Member for the City of Santa Barbara Library.

This site (https://www.djp3.net/) aggregates my professional contributions—a longer biography is at the bottom of this page. You can find me across the web at the links below; if you’re looking for a platform I haven’t listed, just ask in the comments.

Thanks for visiting. I look forward to connecting.

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Contact

• Email:
  • Preferred Professional: djp3@ledgerlink.ai
  • Preferred Personal: d_j_p_3@djp3.net
• Bibliography Aggregators:
  • Google scholar: donald.j.patterson.iii@gmail.com
  • DBLP: Donald J. Patterson
• LinkedIn: Donald Patterson
• Facebook: donald.j.patterson.iii
  • Westmont Math, Computer Science and Data Analytics Programs 
  • Westmont Center for Technology, Creativity, and the Moral Imagination
  • The Smart Ubiquitous Internet-Of-Things Vending Machine
  • Professor Patterson’s Office Door
• Twitter: @djp3
• Mastodon: Mastodon @ Medium.com
• YouTube: djp3
  • Everything Channel 
  • YouTube Videos for Online Classes
    • Global Disruption and Information Technology
    • From Barter to Bitcoin: Society, Tech and the Future of Money
  • Miscellaneous
    • Ultimate Comedy Fighters
• Online courses:
  • Coursera: iOS Development for Creative Entrepreneurs Specialization
• Google services:
  • donald.j.patterson.iii@gmail.com
  • dpatterson@westmont.edu
  • donald.j.patterson@gmail.com
  • d_j_p_3@djp3.net
• Github: djp3
• Medium: @donpatterson
  • Mastodon @ Medium.com
• Blogs (alas….slowing decaying):
  • LUCI: http://luci.ics.uci.edu/ (This site has evolved following my departure)
  • Codex Perductum: http://djp3.westmont.edu/content/codexperductum/index.html (Archived)
  • Codex Caelestis: http://djp3.westmont.edu/content/codexcaelestis/index.html (Archived)

Biography

Donald J. Patterson is the Vice President of Machine Learning and AI at LedgerLink, a fintech company developing stablecoin tools and blockchain-based financial solutions for banks. Previously, he co-founded Blockpliance, a risk compliance and anti-money laundering startup that helped financial institutions responsibly engage with the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Blockpliance was acquired by LedgerLink in February 2025.

Dr. Patterson’s academic research lies at the interface of ubiquitous computing, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. In this space he researches applications, algorithms, and systems that use intelligent context to support situated sustainable computing. He has received multiple impact awards for his research as well as for his support of undergraduate teaching and research and serves on the City of Santa Barbara’s Library Board.

As an academic, he has led several research projects including work on activity and event recognition from Wi-Fi networks, GPS and RFID sensor streams, and social status streams. Other research includes work on the NSF-funded NomaticIM project and NomaticAid, a context-aware instant messenger system, and a context-aware photo-capture system respectively. Both of these systems work to bring the user control over the digital presentation of their context while solving a generalized form of the position-to-place problem. Patterson’s current research agenda focuses on developing robust sensor interpretation systems that can survive infrastructure intermittency in an effort to manage sustainability challenges in the future, aka Collapse Informatics. His published work has received best paper awards from the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference and the IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computing.

Professor Patterson graduated in 2005 from the University of Washington with a Ph.D. in computer science, funded through competitive scholarships including the University of Washington Educator’s Fellowship and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Prior to graduate school, Professor Patterson served in the U.S. Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer stationed in Italy and Japan. He is also a co-founder of 7+ startup companies based on his research. After graduating, Prof. Patterson worked at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, where he received tenure and served as director of the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction. He also served as a Professor of Computer Science at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California from 2015 to 2024, and continues as a project scientist at UC Irvine.