Brandon L. Reiss

My name is Brandon Reiss.

This site contains some basic information about my professional interests and links to various projects that I have worked on. My expertise lies in Computer Science generally and machine learning systems specifically.

At age four, I experienced my first exposures to computer technology at home. In the following years, configuring home theater equipment, tinkering with XTree Gold and the DOS command-line, and the Philadelphia Inquirer's technology journalism sustained my excitement for technology fields. When I figured out how to edit .ini files to remove the time limit on the Grand Theft Auto game demo, I became a hero to my brothers. Nowadays, I am an effective and highly-trained technology implementor and team leader.

Besides pure technology, I have deep interests in the structure and efficient function of human systems. I care about organizing effective teams to deliver valuable technology to people. My background in Metropolitan Studies and Africana Studies helps me think about integrated systems from individual behaviors through larger organizations such as companies and nations.

My university education informs my understanding of the theoretical foundations of computing. I have both an M.S. and B.A. in Computer Science with additional focus in Mathematics and Machine Learning. However, a great deal of my training is integrated with my citizenship of New York City. I've appreciated the dynamic processes that enable entrepreneurship, from individual interactions with customers as I traveled to-and-fro to perform IT support, to the large-scale financing that powers some of the startups that I've worked for and read about.

Many of my course programming projects are available on my GitHub account located here.

My career history is a productive one focused on early-stage companies. In these resource-constrained and highly urgent environments, I've participated in growing a team and in developing new technologies from the ground up. I've learned how to learn new skills rapidly and the importance of wisely choosing technology investments. I'm proud of the mixture of design and development that I did at Organic Motion and the transition to team leadership that I've made at Knewton.

I've worked on several projects during my academic career. A favorite is noweats, an NLP-powered Twitter feed handler that extracts what New Yorkers are eating over the past hour. Another is an embedded traffic-sensing camera designed for traffic control in developing countries. A computer vision project for real-time mapping using a depth sensor was also fun and challenging, while my work in computer graphics enabled exploration of my artistic style and taught me many clever algorithms.

You may contact me at brandon@brandonreiss.com.