Chief Algorithm Officer

Summary

I create elegant solutions crossing technology disciplines, and rescue "stuck" projects in display advertising, search marketing, optimization, user interface, and brain theory.

• Brain Theory: Encapsulated in 47 pages a self-consistent theory of brains as real-time, real-valued 3-D body controllers: Elastic Nanocomputation in an Ideal Brain, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1409/1409.8275.pdf

• Algorithms: Invented and managed a key innovation in Microsoft's PreFix automatic debugging technology, which nearly eliminated "Blue Screen of Death" crashes in Windows 2000/XP.

• Advertising: Invented Epic Advertising's pCPM ad-influence metric, boosted AdWords margin 60% by sophisticated autobidding, and prototyped a Conversion-Fraud Explorer system.

• Web Services: Created the live FlowSheet service which visually "explains" Excel spreadsheet computations www.flowsheet.us/Public, and the "page-in-page" TreeDoc hypertext display http://www.softky.com/TreeDoc).

• Presentation: Obtained an ovation from hundreds of sleepy scientists during a brief technical presentation; my articles are still used for classroom discussions fifteen years later.

• Journalism: In the well-regarded online journal The Register:
  Google translation:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/15/google_translation/
  Lie detectors: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/31/bill_softky_lie_detectors/
  Consumer robots: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/25/softky_robots_part_one/, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/28/softky_robots_part_two/
  Profile at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14909.html

• Key employee for business analysis and algorithmic strategy.

• Consulted on-demand with product managers, data analysts, and engineers.

• Acquired by Twitter June 2014

• Key employee (#5) for fund-raising, business analysis, prototypes, and numerical strategy .

• Discovered crucial inconsistencies in Google AdWords and major data suppliers.

• Acquired by Adobe Software January 2011

• Singlehandedly created an intricate data-ranking and interactive exploration system for discovering different classes of conversion fraud.

• Designed and prototyped the ad-serving and retargeting optimization algorithms and architecture.

Architected the Universal Data Layer to unify computations on all data: ad-serving, retargeting, alerting, conversion, and fraud.

• Invented Epic's "performance CPM" display-ad influence metric (like "view-through," but statistically consistent).

• Initiated and created an automated split-testing architecture to allow incremental performance-testing of new algorithms prior to full deployment.

• Conceived and coded an automated profit-maximization algorithm for bidding against the Google AdWords "black box," statistically merging numerous influences like week-parting, semantics, historical bids and rank, instant payout changes, and so on.

• Discovered (via data-mining) several curious quirks of Google's AdWords pricing/allocation/presentation system, surprising even seasoned SEM veterans.

• Architected a statistically coherent, adaptive algorithm for "arbitraging" keyword bids in a search marketing service.

• Right-hand man to Jeff Hawkins (Palm/Handspring founder); endless brainstorming with him and the world's best brain theorists.

• Created and implemented a reference architecture for a brain-like hierarchical/predictive processing network.

• Co-taught Theoretical Neuroscience class at Berkeley.

• Designed a unified web-portal architecture for the Personal Financial Services project, encompassing single-sign-on, portfolio display, trading tools, and backend CRM monitoring.

• Authored all customer-facing whitepapers: interactive voice interfaces, wireless stock trading, and strategic/technical issues involved in unifying Reuters' retail & institutional equity-trading products.

• Co-invented and prototyped numerous web applications and server backends.

• Evangelized, invented, and shipped the final essential feature ("message prioritization") of the "PreFix" debugger product; Microsoft bought the company to quickly make Windows NT5/2000/XP nearly crash-proof (patented by Microsoft)

• Created an intuitive graphical display for debug/error messages, illustrating control flow by displaying the code for each subroutine in a box nested inside the calling function (patented by Microsoft).

• Managed the integration between software, algorithm, biophysical, and mechanical aspects of the company's only product.

• Evangelized, invented, and prototyped the product's next-generation transducer technologies: a microphone-based "receiver" much lighter, cheaper, and more reliable than the previous design, and a electromagnetic "transmitter" with far better vibrational, cabling, and power properties than its predecessor.

• Created and taught "Physics for Poets" for hundreds of science-shy Junior College students.

• Taught Physics to West African high school students, who then earned the highest exam scores in the country.
  

Education

Ph.D., Computation & Neural Systems / Physics
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

BS, Physics (with Honors, Phi Beta Kappa)
Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania