| adam.b@gmail.com | https://github.com/adamberenzweig |
| http://berenzweig.com/adam | https://www.linkedin.com/in/madadam/ |
I’ve spent most of my career building products around machine learning. I enjoy taking the latest research breakthroughs and figuring out how to apply them in useful, high-impact projects. I have broad knowledge of systems architecture, the product lifecycle, UI/UX best practices, machine learning and data science.
It will be years before we fully sort out the implications of the recent rapid progress in machine learning. There are incredible opportunities, and some serious challenges, both technical and social. I feel lucky to be able to contribute to the conversation.
Research and engineering expertise includes:
In June 2016, I joined CTRL-labs, a neurotech startup building a practical neural interface, worn on the arm, that decodes the signals flowing from your brain to your hand. The goal is to be the primary input technology for the next personal computing platform – when your computer is worn on your body, such as eyeglasses.
As Director of R&D, my role was to ask “What is this thing good for?” I launched and led projects, steered the technical direction of the science and human-interactions teams, and contributed directly to core demos used for fund-raising and eventually our acquisition by Facebook.
Talks, press, and podcasts:
In early 2014 I helped start Clarifai, a machine learning and image recognition company, with Matt Zeiler. I served as CTO from founding through 2016.
Accomplishments:
Some talks I’ve given about Clarifai and current trends in computing driven by machine learning:
I was a software engineer at Google from 2003-2014. A brief overview of projects and accomplishments:
Music Recommendation for Google Play Music
I was tech lead of the music recommendation team during the initial beta launch, and architected the recommendation service. I designed and helped build features and components such as:
Google News
I led a team to build the first large-scale application of NLP to Google News, producing named entity annotations and using them in various ways:
Realtime Search
Realtime Search was the first project to provide search results (mostly from Twitter) that streamed in real-time on the Google search results page. I worked on the search infrastructure to support real-time streaming. The project won an OC (Organizing Committee) award.
Goggles / Visual Search / Google Glass
I worked on Goggles, the first widely-used image recognition mobile app for consumers, during the transition from standalone app into Google Photos. I was also involved with some experiments to use recognition and computer vision in Google Glass, specifically for a timelapse life-logging system. Goggles was eventually as Google Lens.
Colaboratory
I helped steer a project to build a new document-based computing tool that unifies code with text and interactive visualization. I developed the product vision and hacked on early proof-of-concept demos, such as: an in-browser python kernel, two-way binding between data cells in the browser and in backend execution kernels, and interactive visualizations with editable javascript.
The project was eventually launched as Google Colab.
Non-project accomplishments
NEC Research Institute, Princeton NJ.
I interned at NEC for two summers of my Ph.D., during the heydey when Vladimir Vapnik, Yann LeCunn, Steve Lawrence, and others there were doing pioneering work in machine learning and information retrieval. I worked with Brian Whitman on music information retrieval, a precursor to his company The Echo Nest (now part of Spotify) and my work for the Google Play Music service.
Lucent Technologies, Whippany NJ.
Security Standards Architect, Wireless Networks.
I designed security architectures for wireless phone networks, and represented Lucent in industry standards bodies.
Learning In Progress, Inc., New York, NY.
I co-founded an ed-tech company (we called it “e-learning” back then) with the mission of building better tools and games to teach computer programming and IT skills. We were about 10 years too soon.
Hotjobs, New York, NY
After I built a website as an intern for a small technical recruiting firm in NY, the CEO asked me if I could put some of their job listings from the database up on the website. The resulting site evolved into Hotjobs, one of the darlings of the first dot-com boom.
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
See Google Scholar.
I engineered and programmed the software for Reflecting The Stars, a public art installation on the Hudson River, for Jon Morris of The Windmill Factory. Covered in Wired and The New York Times.
In a past life, I played and wrote music. I like to climb and surf, learn new languages, travel, and eat good food.