I'm an Oxbridge computer science & artificial intelligence PhD with an entrepreneurial spark.
I did my PhD in deep learning/computer vision at Oxford with Prof Andrew Zisserman (on human pose and gesture recognition). Before taking up the position at Oxford, I did my BA in computer science at Cambridge, and started pioneering computer vision research into recognising facial micro-expressions (very short facial expressions that can be used for lie detection), resulting in a patent and lots of press. I have also interned with Google in Mountain View, CA, and have worked as the chief data scientist with a startup to take many cool product ideas from conception to launch.
I'm particularly attracted to moonshots: high-risk high-reward tech projects that tackle socially important problems.
Specialties: Artificial intelligence, big data, computer vision, deep learning, entrepreneurship, leadership, machine learning, systems.
Chief Technology Officer @ CTO for one of the biggest startups in Finland for web hosting and virtual servers.
- Led the research and development of new services, formulating long-term technical and business strategies.
- Oversaw the correct operation and security of mission-critical servers hosting large multi-national companies.
- Guided and supported staff and important clients in person, by phone and e-mail.
- Engineered large-scale software and systems for both the company and its clients. From August 2009 to Present (6 years 5 months) Closed Beta Tester @ Wrote and ran software for testing Skype and its related devices. From May 2006 to Present (9 years 8 months) Data Science Consultant @ Advised CTO and team on big data problems involved in automatic political risk prediction.
- Devised new machine learning and natural language processing algorithms.
- Developed a new real-time online clustering algorithm for arbitrary text articles. From July 2014 to July 2015 (1 year 1 month) London, United KingdomData Scientist / Engineering Lead @ Heading the work on data science and algorithms for a startup that is disrupting search.
- Helped define a product vision and strategy.
- Proposed new features and improvements based on user need analysis; identified solutions, and prototyped and tested them on users.
- Worked with five engineers to build and launch new features.
- Developed and devised (from scratch) new algorithms for recommender systems, search and quality prediction. From September 2013 to July 2015 (1 year 11 months) Manchester, United KingdomHPC Consultant @ The main advisor for Oxford of a £500,000 worth, 500 CPU core High Performance Computing supercomputer cluster. In charge of purchasing, developing, maintaining and extending the cluster. From January 2012 to January 2014 (2 years 1 month) Engineering Intern @ Interned at Google for a summer and split my time between two areas:
- Database systems engineering in C++ & Python (including various open-sourced MySQL patches).
- YouTube-related computer vision research. From July 2011 to October 2011 (4 months) Computer Vision Researcher @ Researched on automatic methods for capturing and understanding facial expressions.
- Developed, published and patented the first system for automatically recognising facial micro-expressions (useful for lie detection), and a system for distinguishing natural and acted facial expressions. From September 2010 to August 2011 (1 year) Machine Learning Researcher @ Developed a method for real-time prediction of emotions from speech & analysis of public speaking skills. From September 2009 to March 2010 (7 months) Human Computer Interaction Researcher @ Developed an open-source robot controller that was demoed at the HCI'09 conference and in BBC News. From June 2009 to August 2009 (3 months) Chief Architect @ Engineered large-scale software and systems for the company and its clients. From August 2004 to July 2009 (5 years) Software Engineer Intern @ Interned at AlertMe, a Cambridge-based startup that provides hardware and software for home security and energy monitoring.
- Initiated and introduced a scheme for saving costs and increasing productivity by virtualising company servers using the Xen environment.
- Resolved production system instability by clustering and optimising database servers.
- Implemented and documented database support in C back-end.
- Redesigned part of PHP customer control panel. From June 2008 to September 2008 (4 months) Software Engineer @ Designed and developed two multilingual company websites from scratch using LAMP. From August 2004 to September 2007 (3 years 2 months) Java Open-source Project Maintainer and Developer @ Maintained a large open-source Java-MySQL bot project for an online game with over 10 000 active users.
- Supervised the security, performance and overall quality of the product.
- Co-ordinated tasks between developers and motivated them when necessary.
- Solved both technical and social issues arising from the development. From May 2004 to June 2007 (3 years 2 months) Software Engineer and Systems Consultant @ Consulted the organisation for its major technical investments and decisions.
- Developed an online domestic violence database and front-end with PHP and MySQL. From 2005 to 2006 (1 year) Systems Consultant @ Consulted UNDP's IT department through Amnesty International Finland.
- Eliminated web server performance issues as a consultant for the IT department. From 2005 to 2006 (1 year) System Engineer @ The main system administrator of the data centre; in charge of hardware as well as software. From March 2001 to July 2004 (3 years 5 months)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Engineering Science (deep learning & computer vision) @ University of Oxford From 2011 to 2015 BA (Hons), class 1 (top grade), Computer Science @ University of Cambridge From 2007 to 2010 Tomas Pfister is skilled in: Big Data, Deep learning, Software Engineering, Algorithms, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Entrepreneurship, Matlab, MySQL, Java, C++, C, Computer Science, Unix, Linux