▶About the Author
⦁ Sebastian Raschka
Sebastian Raschka, author of the bestselling book, Python Machine Learning, has many years of experience with coding in Python, and he has given several seminars on the practical applications of data science, machine learning, and deep learning, including a machine learning tutorial at SciPy - the leading conference for scientific computing in Python.
While Sebastian's academic research projects are mainly centered around problem-solving in computational biology, he loves to write and talk about data science, machine learning, and Python in general, and he is motivated to help people develop data-driven solutions without necessarily requiring a machine learning background.
His work and contributions have recently been recognized by the departmental outstanding graduate student award 2016-2017, as well as the ACM Computing Reviews' Best of 2016 award. In his free time, Sebastian loves to contribute to open source projects, and the methods that he has implemented are now successfully used in machine learning competitions, such as Kaggle
⦁ David Julian
David Julian is currently working on a machine learning project with Urban Ecological Systems Ltd and Blue Smart Farms ( http://www.bluesmartfarms.com.au) to detect and predict insect infestation in greenhouse crops. Dave is a technology consultant, trainer, and musician. Dave has over 15 years' experience as a programmer, web developer, and in teaching small groups. He is proficient in HTML/CSS/JavaScript and PHP and is also an Python enthusiast. Dave is currently investigating data science applications using the Python programming language and relevant machine learning and data science packages. Dave has built virtual private networks and mail servers and managed Windows networks. He has authored a book for us titled Designing Machine Learning Systems with Python and has also been a Technical Reviewer for one of our books, Python Machine Learning.
⦁John Hearty
John Hearty is a consultant in digital industries with substantial expertise in data science and infrastructure engineering. Having started out in mobile gaming, he was drawn to the challenge of AAA console analytics.
Keen to start putting advanced machine learning techniques into practice, he signed on with Microsoft to develop player modelling capabilities and big data infrastructure at an Xbox studio. His team made significant strides in engineering and data science that were replicated across Microsoft Studios. Some of the more rewarding initiatives he led included player skill modelling in asymmetrical games, and the creation of player segmentation models for individualized game experiences.
Eventually John struck out on his own as a consultant offering comprehensive infrastructure and analytics solutions for international client teams seeking new insights or data-driven capabilities. His favourite current engagement involves creating predictive models and quantifying the importance of user connections for a popular social network.
After years spent working with data, John is largely unable to stop asking questions. In his own time, he routinely builds ML solutions in Python to fulfil a broad set of personal interests. These include a novel variant on the StyleNet computational creativity algorithm and solutions for algo-trading and geolocation-based recommendation. He currently lives in the UK.