We do foundational research. Some of it becomes a company.

HeyDonto Labs is a research laboratory headquartered in Berlin, with offices in Mexico City and Knoxville. The work is deep learning, quantum-inspired methods and the physics of intelligence, applied to data. The lab is built around Dr. Reza Nehzati, the scientist behind the law of natural intelligence, published as Data Field Theory.

Eight papers are in print across Frontiers, Elsevier and Tech Science Press.

The research spine

HeyDonto Labs is the culmination of a life's work that started before Reza Nehzati was a teenager.

Dr. Reza Nehzati
Dr. Reza Nehzati, PhDChief Scientific Officer

At fourteen, Reza Nehzati took Iran's national college entry exam, a test written for sixteen and seventeen year olds, and posted the twelfth highest score in the country. He entered college early. He holds a PhD in AI and machine learning. The work since has run through deep learning optimization, quantum-inspired computation and the geometry of learning. He is first author on every paper the lab has indexed, sole author on all but one, and sole named inventor on every patent it has filed. Axiomera and Conduit both run in production on the harmonization pipeline he architected.

Peer reviewed

His Data Field Theory framework was published in Frontiers in Big Data in June 2026, handled by an editor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and reviewers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Université Ibn Zohr.

Patent allowed

The evolutionary neural networks application, USPTO 19/181,522, allowed April 2026 with the issue fee paid.

At scale

His federated learning study predicted 30-day hospital readmissions across 47 US healthcare institutions, published in Elsevier's Informatics in Medicine Unlocked.

Beyond machine learning

His record outside the lab includes a wearable graphene-patterned gas sensor in Results in Optics, a graphene terahertz electronic nose in Sensors and Actuators A: Physical and a wireless semi-implantable brain-recording microsystem in Next Research. ORCID · Google Scholar.

Writing the standard

Sits on the American Dental Association committee drafting the AI Model Fact Label standard.

The research.

Geometric foundations of learning

Data Field Theory, a physics-based, geometric account of learning, and the foundational model being built on it.

publishedmodel in development

Federated and privacy-preserving learning

Deep learning models trained jointly across institutions that cannot share raw data, without moving a record between them.

published

Semantic harmonization and interoperability

The semantic intelligence and FHIR-native harmonization work, from a quantum-inspired, many-worlds harmonization framework now under peer review to the Epic Clarity study across three health systems, 127,834 patients and 492,542 encounters. Axiomera and Conduit run in production on this research area.

14 in reviewrunning in production
The foundational model program

A foundational model built on published geometry.

The framework

Data Field Theory treats learning as geometry on curved space rather than as a pipeline problem.

The model

A foundational model built on the framework is in development at DFT Labs, announced in July 2026 as a staged plan to test the physics of intelligence.

Out of the lab.

Axiomera

Data transformation and the analysis layer on top of it, inside the customer's own cloud.

axiomera.com

Conduit

The patient exchange. Referrals arrive as structured data rather than as a fax. Member of the Oral Health Interoperability Alliance.

Kim Diamond, President
conduitdental.ai

Red Wheelbarrow

The multi-agent development platform the lab developed in-house when Cursor, Replit, Lovable and others did not meet our needs. Every venture here runs on it.

redwheelbarrow.ai

Data Field Theory

The published geometric framework and the foundational model in development on it.

Dr. Reza Nehzati, principal investigator
dft-labs.com

The people.

Dr. Reza Nehzati, PhD

Dr. Reza Nehzati, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer

Founder of DFT Labs. His self-healing code generation and self-evolving AI frameworks are published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, and a book-length treatment of Data Field Theory is in preparation.

Rivers Morrell

Rivers Morrell

Founder & CEO

Founded and sold three software companies, CloudRetriever, Vet Marketing Pro and Veterinary Dashboards, negotiating each sale himself. More than fifteen years building and scaling technology companies. Studied at UC San Diego.

Javi Diaz

Javi Diaz

Chief Operating Officer

Led the technology diligence for WhiskerCloud's acquisition by Petvisor as its SVP of Technology. Now runs operations for the lab and its ventures.

Kristopher Fuhr

Kristopher Fuhr

Head of Growth

Built WCG's clinical-trials book from zero to more than twenty million dollars in three years and closed six Fortune 500 clients along the way. Before that, GYN surgical sales at Hologic and nearly two decades of commercial work in clinical research and medical devices.

Jeff Jones

Jeff Jones

Chief Commercial Officer, Axiomera

Co-founded CloudRetriever with Rivers Morrell and took the company through to exit. Now leads enterprise sales and partnership development at Axiomera and sits on the board.

Kim Diamond

Kim Diamond

President, Conduit

Spent most of her career at Henry Schein, ending in vice president roles across multi-site sales and customer delivery. As President of Conduit she runs the patient exchange between dental practices, and between medical and dental.

Newsroom

The latest from the lab.

Come look at the work.

If you want to see what sits behind the papers, or you work on the same problems from a different angle, book a technical briefing with the people who did the research.