My professional side
Click on the link for my online resume.
So – what do I do for a living? Well, mainly two things: I solve tough problems that involve lots of data, and I create new ideas that make software more “intelligent”. The problems I deal with are usually problems that cannot be solved superficially, by quick seat-of-the-pants decisions, but rather need rigorous data analysis and the development of theoretical models. Statistics, math, and Machine Learning are my tools of trade; algorithms, models, and “intelligent” software are the products of my work.
Here is a short one-paragraph bio that I use for publications etc:
Kosmas currently works as Principal Scientist at KAYAK.com, in the Analytics / Machine Learning group. He is a Computer / Data Scientist with 15+ years in software R&D, co-founder and key contributor to two successful software startup companies (ZoomInfo and CardScan), and holder of 7 patents. Born and raised in Greece, after his BSc in Physics came to the US in 1991 for graduate studies, completing a Master's and PhD in Computer Science. He then worked in a variety of projects, ranging from Telemedicine and Image Processing for NASA, to Computer Simulation for DOD and FEMA, to Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition for various startup companies, to Automated Trading Strategies for the stock markets. He enjoys outdoor activities such as mountain biking, hiking, skiing, and loves reading and getting into all sorts of philosophical discussions about science, technology, the future, Zen, or how to successfully raise 3 soon-to-be teenage daughters.
and also here is a slightly longer and less formal description of my career so far, with further pointers:
I currently work as Principal Scientist at KAYAK.com, in the Analytics / Machine Learning group. I guess I am not in liberty to talk much about my current projects, but suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoy my current work, spending my time doing Analytics and solving some intellectually stimulating problems, using all kinds of technical goodies, such as Groovy, Java, Hadoop, Hive, Weka, etc, all in a Unix environment.
Prior to Kayak I worked for several years as Principal Software Engineer / Computer Scientist at CardScan Inc in Cambridge, MA. One of my major projects was to create and launch ZoomInfo Inc, a spinoff company for Web Data Mining. That project involved developing Web robots and Machine Learning technologies for extracting information from Web sites. I used extensively statistics and Bayesian Networks to make my Web robots "smart". When I finished the core technical development and the focus switched to marketing, I returned back to CardScan, where I took charge of the Image Processing and Machine Learning development, until the company was successful sold to DYMO, and found myself in a big Fortune 500 corporation managing global projects that spanned 3 continents (America, Europe, and Asia). Prior to my CardScan / ZoomInfo / DYMO years I worked at Exa Corp. in Lexington, MA, where I developed software for visualizing 3-D fluid flow simulations, and prior to that I worked at IEM, Inc. where I built Computer Simulation software for various government agencies, including traffic simulation and chemical accident simulations for DOD and FEMA. I have also worked as a Visiting Scientist at University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, doing research on Telemedicine that involved Medical Imaging, Data Compression, and Image Processing. That was basically an extension of my Ph.D. research and was funded by a grant I received from NASA soon after I finished graduate school.
Some of the papers I have published are available here, including my dissertation. Also, you can download my document on C++ standards and guidelines which seems to be often requested. Finally, here is a small FAQ and code for my C++ smart pointers, for those less fortunate souls who are still stuck with C/C++ despite the widespread availability of more advanced languages such as Java and C#… A word of advice: if you must work with C++ then definitely use smart pointers, but as soon as you can, move on to Java or C# or other more modern languages! :-)
To contact me, please e-mail at: kosmas@computer.org
