Michael Harmon

Applied Machine Learning Lead
mdh266@gmail.com

I am an Applied Machine Learning Lead in New York City that is always trying to learn new things and grow. I earned a PhD in Computational Applied Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 where my research was the intersection of numerical analysis, high performance computing and renewable energy. In grad school I spent most of my time studying discontinuous Galerkin methods and finite element methods for simulating photo-electrochemical solar cells. I was also a contributor to the C++ based finite element library deal.ii.

I tend to lean more towards to engineering side of data science and spend most of my time writing in Python, SQL, Scala & Bash. I am big fan of Apache Spark and have been using it extensively since 2017. Now days I am focusing on my learning as much as I can about Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning and Cloud Computing.

For over 17 years I was a competitive athlete in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, during which I won the World Championships and achieved the rank of 1st degree Black Belt from 2x Pan American, Champion Professor Dave Ginsberg. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing coach along with great mentors, sponsors, friends, teammates and students.




Accomplishments

Computational Applied Mathematics (2008 - 2016)

  • PhD from University of Texas at Austin
  • National Science Foundation RTG Fellowship
  • Open Source Software Contributor
  • Published in Journal of Computational Physics

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (1999-2016)

  • 1st Degree Black Belt
  • 12 years coaching students to become local, National & World Champions
  • World Champion, Brown Belt, 2012
  • Ranked 8th in World Pound-For-Pound, Brown Belt, 2012
  • 2 x Pan American Bronze Medalist, Brown Belt, 2011, 2012
  • 3 x North American Grapplers Association Champion, 2001, 2008, 2011
  • Texas State Champion, 2013
  • Fight-To-Win Champion, 2014