Brian Regan
Hello there!
I am an Irish Machine Learning Scientist working at ASOS in London. I have a Masters in Data Science from ETH Zürich and conducted my Master thesis on sequential recommendation with reinforcement learning with Spotify researchers in their London office. I am very passionate about harnessing data and Machine Learning techniques to tackle the world's problems, developments in cutting edge learning algorithms and the overlap between Biology, Neuroscience and Computer Science.
Experience
Machine Learning Scientist
Part of the Retail Science AI team. We are working on how we can leverage Artificial Intelligence to improve pricing and promotional activity. I have a broad range of responsibilites ranging from model design to stakeholder engagement to writing production code.
I am helping to build bespoke production Machine Learning pipelines in Python using scikit-learn, pandas, MLFlow and related libraries. These pipelines include crucial experiment-running capabilities allowing us to keep the distance between science and production at a minimum.
Master Thesis Intern
Conducted my Master thesis in Reinforcement Learning for Sequential Recommendation with Spotify researchers in the London office.
Engineering work involved the design and implementation of a TensorFlow based pipeline for rapid and flexible experimentation.
Contributed to weekly research reading groups and attended internal research conferences to stay up-to-date with exciting research.
Machine Learning Teaching Assistant
Teaching assistant for one of the most popular master level courses in the Computer Science department, Advanced Machine Learning.
Data Science Intern
Designed the structure and schema of a database to store data for prototype applications.
Helped in the design of programs to automatically clean and upload clients’ GPS data to this database.
Designed a Shiny application in R, heavily using custom CSS, HTML and JavaScript and sitting atop the aforementioned database, which acted as a prototype application for interested clients.
Education
ETH Zürich
Graduated with an overall average grade of 5.6/6.
Classes Include:Computer Vision, Big Data, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Natural Language Understanding and Probabilistic Artificial Intelligence.
University of California, San Diego
Achieved a 3.883 GPA and awarded with a grade of 94% from NUIG for the semester.
Classes Included:Nonparametric Statistics, Introduction to Computational Statistics, Exploratory Data Analysis & Inference and Introduction to Topolgy.
National University of Ireland, Galway
Graduated with a first class honors with an overall grade of 93.23%
Classes Included:Applied Regression Models, Machine Learning & Data Mining, Introduction to Bayesian Modelling, Linear Algebra, Probability Theory & Applications, Stochastic Processes, Databases, Algorithms & Scientific Computing, Measure Theory and Metric Spaces.
Skills
- Familiarity with and understanding of a large array of Machine Learning algorithms and the situations to which they are suited.
- Strong ability to apply these algorithms to complex data types such as images, audio etc.
- Understanding of the theory of Neural Networks especially CNNs are their application to Computer Vision.
- Strong ability implementing and evaluating Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms in a structured way and at scale, predominantly in Python (with TensorFlow and scikit-learn).
- Strong knowledge of the design principles for handling data at large scales.
- Familiarity with large scale data technologies and frameworks such as Hadoop & Spark.
- Knowledge of and experience with emerging storage technologies such as document stores and graph databases.
- Experience with the design and use of SQL databases.
- Strong knowledge of the syntax and principles of data storage formats such as JSON, XML etc.
- Passionate about the presentation and communication of data and modelling findings.
- Experience with the theory and implementation of effective Data visualisation, particularly in R.
- Experience with implementing data driven Shiny web applications in R.
Awards & Hackathons
- 1st Place - F10 Climate FinTech Hack Zürich (Nov. 2017)
- 4th Place - AIB Datahack 2017
- 3rd Place - ETH Entrepreneur Club InCube 2017
- University Scholar 2015, 2016, 2017 - National Univeristy of Ireland, Galway
- Sir Joseph Larmor Prize 2018 - National University of Ireland, Galway
- Peel Prize in Geometry 2014 - National Univeristy of Ireland, Galway
- SIX Hackathon 2018
- Citadel Datathon Dublin and Citadel Datathon Oxford
- Stokes Modelling Workshop NUIG 2015, 2016 & 2017
Interests
I was a committee member of the ETH Entrepreneur Club during my time in Zürich. In particular, I was on the team responsible for the organisation of the massively successful 2018 iteration of the InCube event, a entrepreneurship hackathon style event in which I participated in 2017. Information about InCube 2018 can be found here.
When not coding or studying I spend my time hiking and travelling around Europe. I also enjoy film and reading. I keep a (roughly) up to date list of what I've been reading here.
