Engineering of Research

Frédérick Giasson

Machine Learning, Engineering & Data

Frédérick Giasson

Machine Learning, Engineering & Data

My career as a data and machine learning engineer didn't start with a degree or a business plan; it started with a book.

That book was "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov. Asimov's fictional science of psychohistory opened my eyes to the world of data, statistics, and their profound impact on human history.

My first successful AI attempt was to program a team of small robots that played soccer at the RoboCup US Open in 2003 in Pittsburgh and 2004 in New Orleans. Sensors and vision data were flowing in, and individual robot and group decisions needed to be made. Everything relied on data to lead to actions that fulfilled a common goal. This experience dictated all the research and development I would undertake in the next fifteen years.

Since then, I co-founded Structured Dynamics LLC. and Cognonto Corp. As their CTO, I had to research and engineer innovative approaches and techniques for managing and leveraging data in the field of the semantic web, machine learning, and knowledge graph management. I co-developed two knowledge graphs, integrated hundreds of data sources, linked millions of entities, created and managed hundreds of machine learning models, and co-developed an open-source semantic data management platform. I also engineered multiple machine learning pipelines.

Then, I pivoted to be a manager and the head of research, design, and development of Rakuten Ready's machine learning platform. That platform implements pipelines that integrate its terabytes of data warehouse to train, optimize, and evaluate thousands of models in parallel. It constantly evaluates tens of thousands of models deployed in its production environment, enabling tens of thousands of predictions to be performed per second.

Currently, I am thriving in my role as a Senior Data Development Manager at Shopify. Leading the Machine Learning Platform, I have the privilege to create and guide world-class teams in the development of Shopify's Machine Learning Platform, fostering a strong machine learning culture. We design, architect, and develop an end-to-end platform that supports more than 500 data scientists, defining the best machine learning practices in coordination with the data science technical leadership group.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt -

Things are only impossible until they're not

- Jean-Luc Picard -

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up

- Paul Valery -

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

- Socrate -

The way to succeed is to double your error rate

- Thomas J. Watson -

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it