Dr. Chris Venour

Chris Venour has a PhD in Computer Science from
the University of Aberdeen.  His research in Artificial
Intelligence explores how computers can use corpus
statistics, clustering and vector spaces to recognize
and generate a specific kind of humorous incongruity.
This is leading-edge research into the automated
extraction of very subtle information from speech
and text.

Principal Data Scientist

Chris is a Data Scientist and Machine Learning researcher
who works in the areas of Computer Vision, Natural Language
Processing, and Deep Learning. His work with Salience
includes:

· Controlling the flight of drones via gestures recognized by a Convolutional Neural Network.

· Automatically extracting semantic information from text using Deep Learning.

· Creating a system for automating anomaly detection in the Maritime environment. This work was performed for Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Valcartier. The system automatically retrieves and collates shipping data, creates an OWL ontology from this information, uses a Reasoner to automatically search for anomalies in the ontology, and displays these anomalies in a Google Earth visualization of the Maritime domain.

Expertise

· Machine Learning and Data Science: Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Convolutional Neural Networks, Recurrent Neural Networks, Decision Trees (xgboost), Tensorflow, Keras, BERT, Principal Components Analysis, Natural Language Processing.

· Internet of Things: AVR programming (i.e. programming micro-controllers such as the ATmega328P), Raspberry PI, Arduino.

· Visualization programming: Unity 3D (game engine), Google Earth API, D3.js

· Technical Writing: With degrees in English and Computer Science, Chris is also a respected technical writer.  He has worked as a technical writer for Salience, Testfire Labs, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Calgary, Shell Canada, and Canadian Pacific Railways.

Qualifications

· PhD, Computer Science, University of Aberdeen, 2013.

· M.Sc., Computer Science, Queens University, 1999.

· MA, English, University of Victoria, 1992.

· BA (Honours) English, University of Calgary, 1990.

Contact Chris Venour for a full curriculum vitae.

Chris Venour

PhD, MSc, MA