Allen was born into a family of educators, and started learning coding on Apple II since 6 years old. After graduating from University of Illinois specialized in computer vision and machine learning, he has been an innovator in Bay Area in the past 15 years. At UC Berkeley, he founded the AR/VR and autonomous driving Master of Engineering programs and advises more than 30 graduate students annually in the EECS Department. He also was the Chief Scientist of the Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership and guest lectured at Haas Business School for Fortune 500 executives. At Silicon Valley, he has co-founded three startup companies and was the chief designer and technician of two AR/VR smart glasses. He co-authored 30+ patents and 100+ publications.