From the Ivory Tower to the Front Lines of Peace

Justin Lane grew up knowing the world wasn't fair. As he climbed the academic ladder, he was restless. The questions that drove him weren't the kind that got answered in journals or conference rooms. They were the ones that mattered on the ground, in divided communities, in places where the wrong policy choice could cost lives.

His doctorate at Oxford focused on something most researchers treated as abstract: why do people believe what they believe, and when do those beliefs lead to violence?

Justin wanted to do more than just theorize about it. As an alumnus of Queen's University Belfast, he had a personal connection to Northern Ireland — a society still living in the shadow of its Troubles, still negotiating the distance between communities separated by walls as much physical as psychological. That context became one of his first laboratories.

Working alongside his co-founders, Justin began developing AI solutions for high-risk social issues as early as 2011, tackling challenges like religious terrorism and the Syrian refugee crisis. The team’s early work in Northern Ireland produced insights that surprised even seasoned peacebuilders.

For example, when they modeled the effects of removing Belfast's "peace walls," the data suggested the walls themselves weren't the core driver of division, if anything they bolstered local tourism and offered an occasion for cross-community discussion. However, investing in structured cross-community activities, like sports programs, would do more to build unity. Community leaders took note, and fostering those programs became part of the ongoing peace effort.

But academia moved slowly, and the world didn't. Justin realized that working within academia wasn't fast enough to make a real impact. CulturePulse was born from that conviction.

Where most AI systems predict behavior by tracking what people do, CulturePulse models focus on what motivates actions: the beliefs, values, and moral frameworks that shape how people make decisions. The technology builds simulated populations of people as digital twins, each embedded with psychological profiles drawn from real-world data, capable of running "what if" scenarios before decisions are made in the real world. Justin describes it as a flight simulator for peacemakers, a way to stress-test assumptions and spot unintended consequences before they become crises.

Justin and CulturePulse have since worked on issues in South Sudan, the Baltics, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Syrian refugee crisis, and with the United Nations Development Program on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has also partnered with Cambridge University and NATO's DIANA accelerator.

The mission, as Justin frames it, is deliberate and unapologetic: "We want to show that peace is profitable."

Justin is building the kind of company that reflects the arc of his life driven by a deep belief that understanding human psychology at scale is the most powerful tool we have for preventing violence, and that the place to prove it isn't a conference paper. It's the real world.