It is not common for a neurosurgical robotics engineer to leave academic research to build a go-to-market platform. Yet this is exactly what is happening in New York.
Cliqk, a fast-growing AI startup, has recruited Alvin Pan, an emerging talent in autonomous medical systems and large-scale video learning, as Chief Technology Officer. Pan previously developed reinforcement learning agents used in surgical robotics and medical imaging workflows. Now, he is applying similar intelligence models to a new domain: how brands and creators are distributed across the internet.
Cliqk is building an AI GTM platform. The platform automates the launch and distribution of brands, product releases, campaigns, and creative projects across press, social media, UGC networks, online communities, billboards, newsletters, and real-world events. With one input, Cliqk generates the multi-channel strategy, the assets, the influencer pipeline, and the execution sequence.
Before joining Cliqk, Pan worked at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and healthcare AI. His experience spans publishing machine learning research at Carnegie Mellon to constructing VideoLLM-based robotic assistance systems at NYU Langone. The work placed him among the youngest engineers contributing to early frameworks for autonomous surgery.
However, Pan also maintained a deep interest in creative communication. He spent evenings editing short films, sketching, and producing experimental sound pieces. In a recent internal note he wrote, “I have always been drawn to understanding how expression moves. Not only how the body works, but how ideas travel.”
That question, how ideas travel, is what brought him to Cliqk.
Cliqk CEO Rohan Gurram, along with co-founder Gary “Bolo” Sargeant and Ilias Anwar, had been assembling a founding team able to combine scientific precision with cultural insight. The team identified a major gap in the market. Companies and creators do not struggle to make things. They struggle to get those things seen.
“GTM is fragmented,” Gurram said. “Most brands spend months coordinating PR firms, influencer agencies, media buyers, community leads, event teams, and content studios. Cliqk consolidates that into one coordinated AI system. Alvin is the architect making that coordination intelligent.”
Pan is developing the core intelligence behind the platform. He is building a multi-modal GTM engine that maps cultural momentum, creator networks, consumer behavior patterns, and audience attention signals. The system can then generate distribution strategies that historically required full agencies and large operational budgets.
According to Gurram, “Alvin views brand distribution with the same structured thinking he once applied to surgical robotics. A complex environment where precision matters.”
Under Pan’s direction, early prototypes focus on what the team calls Launch Genomes. These are dynamic profiles that determine how a concept should spread across specific channels, audience clusters, content formats, regions, and cultural micro-patterns. Instead of guessing, companies and creators receive mapped distribution routes shaped by real-time cultural data.
Pan summarized his move simply:
“I did not leave neurosurgery to step away from science. I left to apply scientific reasoning to distribution, which is one of the most difficult problems in the modern attention economy.”
Analysts note that this move reflects a broader trend. AI researchers are no longer building tools to replace creative work. They are building systems that help creative work scale and reach the audiences it deserves.
About Cliqk
Cliqk is an AI GTM platform that automates how brands, creators, and companies launch across the internet. The platform generates and executes multi-channel distribution, including press, UGC, social ads, influencer campaigns, events, and more. Learn more at www.mycliqk.com.
