Thomas Wood

Live Oak, FL · (971) 770-7914 · thomas@synpon.com

Applied mathematician and AI scientist who is passionate about energy policy, biogerontology, and automation. My previous experience includes graph machine learning, computer vision, and open-ended question answering systems. Currently working on long document summarization and deep reinforcement learning for robotics.


Experience

ML Engineer

OPTX

- Design and build data and machine learning pipelines
- Expose ML services as API endpoints in Kubernetes
- Architect lowest cost ML infrastructure
- Implement a GPT4 + RAG powered chat bot to allow customers to talk to their structured data

Apr 2022 - Present

AI Scientist

LifeBio

- Architect and implement data pipelines for machine learning development
- Long document summarization and question answering with Hugging Face Transformers
- Design and construction of machine learning services with Docker and Kubernetes on Azure
- Development of novel Speech-to-Text methods with SpeechBrain
- Distributed training of large models with DeepSpeed
- Assist co-workers in obtaining machine learning skills with Python
- Evangelize MLOps and DevOps best practices

Feb 2021 - Apr 2022

AI Scientist

Synpon Labs

-Open ended question answering systems with Theano and PyTorch
- State estimation, planning, and dynamic control of humanoid robotics with MuJoCo, Unity, and Drake
- Deep reinforcement learning agents that play games with TensorFlow and PyTorch
- Applied multi-modal computer vision research using PyTorch, Caffe, MS COCO, and Visual Genome
- Open source and commercial software development and consulting services

Jun 2013 - Present

ML Engineer

Portland General Electric

- Guide data science products from local development to AWS production environment
- Architect machine learning workflows in the cloud
- Evangelize modern best software engineering practices around MLOps in the cloud
- Research and development of new data science products
- Machine learning product management

Jul 2020 - Dec 2020

Data Scientist

Nike

- ETL development with Airflow, Spark, and AWS Redshift
- Data visualization with AWS Quicksight
- Python training lead
- NodeJS microservices with AWS Lambdas for real time data analytics
- Data and machine learning solution architecting
- DevOps best practices with Jenkins, BitBucket, and Git

May 2019 - Present

AI Scientist

Huawei

- Visual relation detection, Scene graphs, and Semantic segmentation of images
- Design of algorithms for graph deep learning at scale and applications to traffic modeling
- Software engineering with Go, Linux, Docker, Flask, Python, and C/C++
- Graph database engineering with gremlin, neo4j, and huawei graph engine service

Jul 2018 - Jan 2019

Machine Learning Scientist

Astound

- Development and Implementation of AutoML systems
- Applied Natural Language Understanding

Dec 2017 - Mar 2018

Data Analyst

Intel

- Creation of automated ETL tools using Pandas and MongoDB
- Strategic insight through analysis of time series data
- Developed novel web scrapers for data acquisition

May 2017 - Aug 2017

Senior Data Analyst

Microsoft

- Text Categorization and Sentiment Analysis with AzureML
- Data Munging with SQL and Python
- Data Science training and consultation

Jan 2016 - Feb 2016

Software Engineer

Sportswear, Inc.

- Image processing and digital embroidery software engineering with CUDA and C++
- Build and test engineering with Python
- Data analysis and strategic insight with Python

Dec 2014 - May 2015

Research Scientist

University of Washington School of Medicine

- Developed software to repurpose FDA approved compounds through combining atomic level knowledge of compound-protein interactions with compound-disease associations which was able to identify a known use for over one in four FDA approved drugs which passed an initial screening against the human genome

Apr 2013 - May 2013

Research Fellow

University of Washington School of Medicine

- Created method to simulate single nucleotide polymorphisms and used Gaussian anomaly detection to identify mutations which effected gene function

Jul 2011 - Aug 2012

Education

University of Washington

Master of Science - Applied Mathematics

Focus on Data Science, Scientific Computing, and Robotics

Lamar University

Bachelor of Science - Physics

Focus on Quantum Field Theory and Longitudinal Optics


Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
Workflow
  • Fundamentals of Project Management
    Time? Scope? Cost?
  • Rigorous Problem Formulation
    A problem well formulated is a problem half solved.
  • Exhaustive Literature and Open Source Ecosystem Review
    The best code is the code you don't have to write.
  • Value add
    What can we do to improve this? Where are the bottlenecks?
  • Agile Test Driven Development
    Incremental improvement by starting small and building from the bottom up.

Interests

Like most people, I enjoy spending time outside when I am not working. Whether it is riding bicycles, hiking, going on picnics, or just bringing a book to the beach, I can never get enough time outside in nature.

I am an avid reader of science fiction. If there's no space or advanced technology in a novel, I'm usually not very interested in reading it. If I'm not curled up with a cheap ebook in my spare time, I'm likely cooking delicious food, or writing in my journal.


Certifications

  • Deep Reinforcement Learning Nanodegree - Udacity
  • Underactuated Robotics - MIT EdX
  • Initiating and Planning Projects - UCI Coursera
  • Plasma Physics and Applications - EPFL EdX
  • Intro to Parallel Programming - Udacity
  • Algorithms - Udacity
  • Data Wrangling with MongoDB - Udacity
  • Machine Learning - Stanford Coursera