About

Bio

I'm an AI Engineer with a keen interest in applied AI, especially in business and science applications. Earlier in my career, I worked as a software engineer and before that I was a research scientist intern at IBM Research. In my time there, I worked with a wide variety of machine learning and deep learning models, including BERT, mBERT, XLM, and multi-task DNNs. I contributed to a research paper accepted at AAAI 2021 TAIH workshop and was invited to talk at the AACR 2021 Special Virtual Conference on AI, Diagnosis and Imaging.

In 2019, I completed my MSc e-Science degree and received a Distinction for my research into applications of machine learning in High Energy Physics at CERN. Prior to this, I completed both my bachelor's and honours degrees in Computational and Applied Mathematics at Wits University. I would describe myself as a tech enthusiast, a gym goer, an avid reader and a fan of epic stories/movies like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars 💪!

Skills

AI/ML 80%
Python 85%
PySpark 75%
SQL 80%
Azure Cloud 60%
AWS Cloud 70%
TensorFlow85%
PyTorch 85%

Professional Interests

AI/ML

MLOps/LLMOps

Cloud

Software Engineering


Research Interests

Agentic AI

SLMs

Speech

XAI


Personal Interests

Gym

Reading

Movies

Sleep

Resume

Education

MSc e-Science

2018 - 2019

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Research Topic: The use of machine learning in the search for di-photons in association with missing transverse energy.
LHC data is generally characterised by high dimensionality and class imbalance, therefore, sophisticated models are often required to analyse it. We consider a fully and weakly supervised learning paradigm, employing ML and DL techniques to discriminate between background and signal events. Background events are well researched, so we are not particularly concerned about misclassifying them, however, we pay special attention to how our models classify and misclassify signal events as they are extremely rare. This research forms part of a larger study to investigate physics BSM, particularly the Madala Hypothesis.

BSc(Hons) Comp. & Applied Mathematics

2017 - 2017

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Research Topic: Modelling a slinky falling inside a viscous fluid.
When a slinky is dropped in the air, it exhibits a strange behaviour where its bottom part "temporarily defies gravity" by remaining suspended in the air until its top part hits it. We investigate the mechanics of this behaviour, mathematically derive its governing equations and then solve for the general solution.

BSc Comp. & Applied Mathematics

2012 - 2016

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Professional Experience

AI Engineer

Jan 2023 - Present

Standard Bank, South Africa

  • Design and curate data engineering pipelines to support customer facing applications and downstream analysis
  • Introduce software engineering best practices, including unit testing and version control (Git), for ML workflows
  • Build and deploy PoCs and scalable, production-ready data/ML solutions
  • Introduce and drive the adoption of MLOps, streamlining model training, deployment, and monitoring.
  • Contribute to the migration of machine learning workloads to the cloud, optimizing scalability, costs, and performance.
  • Identify opportunities to monetize data assets, aligning ML initiatives with business value

Software Engineer

Feb 2022 - Dec 2022

Standard Bank, South Africa

  • Implement Java flavored enterprise microservices and REST APIs to integrate with vendor provided APIs using Spring Boot.
  • Interact and configure Postgres databases, service-to-service messaging via AWS SQS & SNS, and JMS Starter to manage the creation of queues and topics.
  • Implementing relevant unit and integration tests for developed applications/services, following software engineering best practices including maintaining version control in Bitbucket and Nexus repository, maintaining good code security practices by using tools such as SonarLint and SonarCube.

Graduate Engineer (CIB Technology)

Feb 2021 - Feb 2022

Standard Bank, South Africa

  • Learn and develop a diversified set of skills in software engineering, financial markets, cloud and banking.
  • Complete certifications such as Site Reliability Engineering by Google, MS Azure Fundamentals and AWS Practitioner.
  • Develop key Data skills, DevOps practices and apply the Agile Methodology in practice as outlined in the Agile manifesto and by relevant SBG Agile Coaches.

Research Scientist Intern

May 2020 - Jan 2021

IBM Research, South Africa

  • Develop proof of concept technologies and algorithms, conduct research, formulate hypothesis and develop data driven solutions using state-of-the-art ML and DL techniques.
  • Develop skills in Natural Language Processing and build DL models that leverage transfer learning for domain adaptation and model transfer in low resource settings. This includes contributing to and maintaining GitHub repos for developed models.
  • Worked with other interns to develop a detailed concept for a project that would leverage existing biomedical NLP and clinical imaging artefacts to demonstrate value for prospective clients
  • Actively contribute to research publications and patents (see Research section).
  • Acquire knowledge and training in software engineering by creating artefacts for demos and presentations.

Machine Learning Researcher

Jan 2019 - Nov 2019

CERN, Switzerland

  • Conduct research into Machine Learning applications in high energy physics, train and test ML and DL algorithms, analyse results, prepare weekly reports, experiment with new technologies and create documentation for future reference, survey research papers and implement chosen techniques.

Workshops & Conferences

AAAI 2021 TAIH Workshop

Co-authored a paper accepted at the AAAI 2021 TAIH Workshop during my IBM internship.

AACR 2021 Special Virtual Conference: AI, Diagnosis and Imaging

Invited speaker at the American Association for Cancer Research Special Virtual Conference 2021. This is another work item completed during my IBM internship.

CERN School of Computing

Participated in the 2019 Inverted CERN School of Computing, Switzerland.


Workshops & Conferences

CERN 3rd IML Machine Learning Workshop

Attended CERN's 3rd IML Machine Learning Workshop held in April 2019, Switzerland.

SAIP Conference

Participated the South African Institute of Physics Annual Conference held in July 2019, Polokwane.

Red Hat Kubernetes Workshop

Attended the Red Hat Kubernetes Wrokshop organised at CERN in October 2019, Switzerland.


Workshops & Conferences

IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society

Attended the 2018 IEEE NPSS International School of Real Time Systems, Cape Town.

IBM-Wits Data Science Acceleration Workshop

Participated in the 2018 IBM & Wits Data Science Acceleration Engagement Workshop, Johannesburg.

Projects

MIT Covid-19 Hackathon

Project associated with a hackathon organized by MIT to develop solutions for the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa.

AI driven Chatbot

(decommissioned)

Basic AI-driven chatbot called "Jaba" which I built and integrated into Telegram for personal skills development.

AWS hosted Serverless App

(decommissioned)

An app that can be queried for ideal weather conditions for a pet. This was part of a project I completed for the AWS Building Serverless Applications course.

Contact

Contact Me

My Address

Johannesburg Area, South Africa

Social Profiles

Email Me

please contact via LinkedIn

Call Me

please contact via LinkedIn