About Me
Hi, I’m Brad. I’m a MSc in Computing Science student at the University of Alberta working with Michael Bowling. I’m interested in reinforcement learning and machine learning more generally. Previously, I was a Search and Data Mining Engineer at Yelp.
Education
University of Alberta
MSc Computing Science
2019 - Present
My research interests lie primarily in reinforcement learning and I look forward to diving deeper into different aspects of the field. I have been a TA for CMPUT 274 and 275. These are honours introductory courses where students learn about C++ and a variety of CS concepts by working with arduinos.
University of British Columbia
BSc Combined Honours Computer Science and Physics
2013 - 2018
I graduated with distinction and was named to the Dean’s Honours List in every academic term. My undergraduate thesis worked on characterizing the behaviour of optical sensors in a Dark Matter experiment. I also worked as a TA for two semesters teaching CPSC 320: Intermediate Algorithm Design and Analysis.
Experience
Yelp - San Francisco, CA
www.yelp.comSearch and Data Mining Engineer
August 2018 - August 2019
Software Engineering Intern
May 2017 - August 2017
As a Search and Data Mining engineer, I worked with a variety of technologies to help improve the relevance of Yelp’s search results. I used Python, Jupyter notebooks, and SQL to perform data analysis and train learning-to-rank models, while I worked in Java to deploy models and new search features into production.
During my time as an intern, I worked on a project to test a new method of ordering reviews on the business pages of Yelp’s iOS app. I oversaw the backend portion of the project and worked to develop a Python API which pulled a review-ordering ML model from a Cassandra database, while retrieving review data from MySQL and providing sorted results to the client.
At Optigo Networks, I worked on a variety of improvements to a customer facing web application build using Javascript and Meteor.js. I integrated a customer billing and subscription system into the app using the Stripe API and queried customer information from MongoDB. As well, I developed visualizations which allowed users to examine BACnet data queried from InfluxDB. Finally, I improved application security by re-implementing the process of uploading and storing files to AWS from the application.
SAP - Vancouver, BC
www.sap.com/products/lumira.htmlSoftware Developer in Test
January 2015 - August 2015
While working as a co-op student at SAP I designed and executed test plans for a feature which allowed users to import data from Hadoop to the SAP Lumira product. I also worked to automate some tests by checking expected HiveQL queries against programmatically generated queries.