Jim Lauletta Portrait

Jim Lauletta

Engineer • Innovator • Builder of Systems — exploring Bivology (life from form), Creating Life From Scratch (abiogenesis research), and PrivateAI (privacy-first AI)

My work spans three frontiers: Bivology, the science of how life emerges from form; Creating Life From Scratch, a NASA-targeted research program to cross the threshold from pure chemistry to life in a geochemical reactor; and PrivateAI, building trustworthy AI systems for a future of smartglasses and ambient computing. All three ask the same question: what is the minimum required for something genuinely new to emerge?

Note: I’m the engineer and founder — not the Boston stand-up comedian with the same name.
Research Spotlight

The Chan Lab at UT Southwestern

"Breast cancer kills because it spreads — and it spreads in part because tumors are remarkably good at disabling the immune cells sent to destroy them. The Chan Lab is working to reverse that."

My granddaughter Caroline Hauer is a Research Associate at Dr. Isaac Chan's lab at UT Southwestern's Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her work focuses on T-cell activation and exhaustion — co-culturing patient-derived breast cancer organoids with immune cells from the same patient to study how tumors suppress the immune system, and what it would take to reverse that suppression.

White Paper — March 2026
T-Cell Exhaustion in Breast Cancer
The science, the field, and Caroline's specific research at the Chan Lab.
↓ Download White Paper
Read the Full Story → Visit The Chan Lab ↗
Research Spotlight — Astrobiology

Creating Life From Scratch

"Life is not a molecule, not a genome, not a metabolism. It is a self-stabilizing network of coupled reaction cycles operating above an error threshold." — Biochemical peer reviewer

A serious scientific program to create life from pure chemistry — starting from molecules, with no biological material of any kind, under conditions recreating ancient Earth's hydrothermal vents and the ocean worlds of Europa and Enceladus.

The project has been reviewed by eight independent evaluators — five AI systems, a human biochemist, a simulated NASA Exobiology panel, and ChatGPT — all converging on the same verdict: High Risk. High Reward. Scientifically serious. A full NASA ROSES-25 C.5 Exobiology grant proposal is prepared and awaiting a Principal Investigator. My granddaughter Caroline Hauer — Research Associate at the Chan Lab, UT Southwestern — is the prospective PI, bringing the biochemistry and institutional affiliation this project needs to move forward.

🔬 NASA Panel
Very Good to Excellent
🧬 Biochemist
Scientifically serious
🤖 8 AI Reviews
High Risk / High Reward
🚀 NASA ROSES-25
C.5 Exobiology — Rolling submission
White Paper — March 2026
Creating Life From Scratch
Plain-language account of the project, the science, all eight reviews, and the NASA proposal. By Jim Lauletta.
↓ Download White Paper
Read the Full Story → CreationThruChemistry.com ↗ ↓ NASA Grant Proposal (v5)

About Jim

At United Airlines I invented the Modem Sharing Device and helped architect the Apollo data communications network. I later founded Apparat Inc. (NewDos for TRS-80; IBM PC add-on boards), reaching about $25M in sales over 9 years. Today I’m exploring AI and Bivology — still learning and building.

Why Bivology V2?

Version 2 brings clarity and focus: a concise essay, runnable code, and a roadmap for experiments. It’s designed to make the threshold from “organics” to life-like systems more tangible.

  • 2D → 3D: from toy worlds to architecture
  • Hands-on prototype code
  • Next experiments and visuals