Paul Azunre

About Paul Azunre

An expert in anything Artificial Intelligence (AI)- from Large Language Models (LLM), Chatbots & Computer Vision to Machine Translation (MT), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), NER and Text-To-Speech (TTS). I have applied these to solve practical problems at scale at organizations ranging from Non-Profits to fast-moving Tech Startups, large Fortune 500 Companies, Top Universities (e.g. MIT, Harvard, etc) and Government Labs (DARPA).I have built teams to successfully tackle some of the world\'s most challenging problems - from news analysis. fake news & disinformation analysis and detection to building the world\'s first machine translation, text-to-speech, ASR, Image Captioning and Chatbot/LLM capabilities for several crucial African Languages representing hundreds of millions of people - ahead of giants like Google & Facebook and with a tiny fraction of their resources.I am excited by the scientific challenge of solving these problems, but I consider my work incomplete if it is not profitable at scale when integrated and deployed as part of real products for real people facing real problems - business or otherwise. As such, my skillset does not stop at scientific research - all of the above mentioned projects included deployment to production as Mobile Apps (both Android and iOS), Web Apps and APIs able to operate profitably at scale.If you looking for an AI Team Builder and Leader with a proven track record of solving real problems with real impact, do reach out. I am also able to speak about my experience to a variety of audiences - whether a highly technical one or not.I am also a published author - see my book \"Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing\" from Manning publications, which was written at the inception of the current LLM craze, was the first of its kind and ushered tens of thousands into this important field.

Experience

1. Co-founder, Director of Research

   Ghana Nlp

   Dec 2019 — Present

   We are building the world\'s first practical AI solutions for Ghanaian and other African languages. Our app Khaya has been used by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, and in many cases provides translation and speech recognition solutions which would otherwise not exist. Proud to be mentoring many new African Data Scientists in this role.

Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

  2009 — 2014

• Swarthmore College

  Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Bachelor of Art (B.A.), Engineering (B.Sc.), Economics (B.A.)

  2003 — 2007

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Master of Science (M.Sc.), Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

  2007 — 2009

Skills

• Matlab
• Spectrophotometry
• Software Development Using Combinations of C, C++, Matlab, C# and Fortran
• Experimentation
• Experience with All Major Operating Systems - Windows, Linux, Mac Os
• Performing Sensitivity and Related Analyses for Various Model Classes
• Simulations
• Simulating Pdes, Odes and Other Model Classes
• Website Development Using Html, Flash and Dreamweaver
• Computer Science
• Physics
• C
• Programming
• Algorithms
• Signal Processing
• Mathematica
• Scanning Electron Microscopy
• Analytic Derivation of Models (See Masters Experience)
• Image Processing
• Mathematical Modeling
• Profilometer
• Computer Vision
• Python
• Latex
• Sputtering
• High-Level Development and Implementation of Algorithms (See Phd Experience)
• Modeling
• Cloud Computing
• Proving Theorems Central to Some Algorithms (See Phd Experience)
• Machine Learning