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To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.

("stolen" from Stas, who in turn quoted Castaneda)

  (Possibly) a human being (of misschien toch een aap?), who suspects a pithecanthrope is not extinct yet.

I was born and grew up in the most beautiful city Lviv (Leopolis, Lwów, Lemberg), Ukraine, in 1980. I received both bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science from Lviv Polytechnic National University in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Shortly after, I spent one year at Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft at the University of Tübingen and eventually landed in Amsterdam where I was part of the Adaptive Information Disclosure project (UvA) working on semantic learning with specific application to ontologies under the supervision of Prof. Pieter Adriaans. During my time at UvA, I had been fortunate to work with many talented scientists, including Edgar Meij and Willem van Hage. I defended my PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam in 2009 and since then worked on a wide range of topics, including textual entailment, default prediction for small and medium enterprises, product recommenders, and bibliometrics, in various roles in industry, from an individual contributor to a head of a group of high performing ML specialists. I thrive in product environments and was responsible for over 100+ commercial bibliometrics projects for clients in EMEA, AMER, and APAC, as well as long-term ML projects that contributed to products' vision (e.g., Research Reference).

If not at regular job, you'll probably find me somewhere in the community reviewing papers, mentoring start ups, converting everyone to shell, participating in online hackathons, discussing the transition from academia to industry, or expanding horizons by annoying my lovely and highly talented friends with ML topics. If you are a recent PhD and consider a move to industry, I'd be happy to have a chat, or else join Smart Tribe and you'll receive plenty of advice.

 more can be found at www.linkedin.com, DBLP, or Google Scholar

according to AMiner AI profile, I'm sociable and diverse

my favourite quotes

  freedom for the pike is death for the minnows

  denken schadet nicht

  be yourself, everyone else is already taken
/Oscar Wilde/

  Das wahre Analphabetentum ist das Unvermögen, schöpferisch tätig zu sein
/(sto | hundert)wasser/

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
/Antoine de Saint-Exupéry/

--- outdated ---

  last read: Mulisch ("Het stenen bruidsbed") and Kehlmann ("Die Vermessung der Welt" thanks to a bookstore in Dortmund, "Ich und Kaminski")

  reading: Hermans ("Onder professoren", thanks to my office mate and paranymph, Victor de Boer)