Geoff Davis
E-mail: geoff@geoffdavis.net
Experience
Mountain View, CA
2017–present
Staff Data Scientist, Google Research
- Led the development of a web app using a PaLM 2 language model to assist in the construction of complex SQL queries over a large data repository.
- Found previously undetected hits in a large-scale antimalarial drug screen via a novel application of machine learning to microscopy images of treated parasites. Source
- Devised and implemented an approach to counteracting batch effects in a cellular assay using optimal transport over Gaussian mixture models; code contributed to Optimal Transport Tools.
Mountain View, CA
2014–2017
Staff Data Scientist
- Tech lead responsible for the development and implementation Verily's pipelines for QA and processing of RNA-Seq data.
- Devised and implemented a novel algorithm for estimating levels of DNA contamination in RNA-Seq data.
Mountain View, CA
2012–2014
Staff Data Scientist, Search Infrastructure
- Gave regular presentations to Senior Vice Presidents on the transition of Google's search users from desktop to mobile.
- Created long-term forecasts for global query volume to guide decisions on the placement of future data centers.
2007–2012
Staff Quantitative User Experience Researcher, Google AdWords
- Analyzed large datasets to provide insights that influenced AdWords and News product team decisions.
- Established a set of AdWords user metrics and developed the necessary infrastructure to gather data from diverse sources.
- Introduced a novel online help format for AdWords, secured resources for development, and showcased its effectiveness. The format was adopted by Gmail, AdSense, and Webmaster Tools.
- Won an internal business competition with an ad format tailored for an important niche market, guided its realization, and filed a related patent.
San Francisco, CA; Raleigh, NC
Collected Insight
2001–2013
Founder
- Core developer for Plone, an open source content management system. Member of the board of directors of the Plone Foundation, 2004-2005.
- Created one of the leading graduate school guides based on data from government sources. Written in Ruby on Rails.
- Principal investigator for the Sigma Xi Postdoctoral Survey project, a national study of young scientists. Raised funds via grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
San Francisco, CA
4charity
2000–2001
Senior Software Engineer
Redmond, WA
1999–2000
Researcher,
Signal Processing Group,
Microsoft Research
1998–1999
Researcher / Software Engineer, Semantic Platform Group
- Researched methods for the efficient storage and transmission of digital multimedia.
- Developed algorithms and software for analyzing and manipulating semantically annotated data.
Hanover, NH
1996–1998
Assistant Professor,
Mathematics Department
1994–1996
John Wesley Young Research Instructor,
Mathematics Department
- Researched wavelet-based compression algorithms, multiwavelet constructions, joint source / channel coding algorithms for packet networks, and fast magnetic resonance image acquisition algorithms. Won two best paper awards.
New York, NY
Corporate Communication Group
1992
Senior Programmer, Interactive Technologies
- Designed and implemented an unencumbered, third person virtual reality software platform in C++. Developed software for optical tracking of hand position, a sprite control object library, control software for video and audio hardware, communications software to enable remote virtual interaction. Gold medalist in the New Media Magazine 1993 Multimedia Awards, gold medalist at the 1992 New York Festivals, and a silver medalist at the 1992 Association of Visual Communicators' CINDY awards. Patent
Geoff Davis — Page 2
Education
New York, NY
1989–1994
Ph.D., Mathematics,
Courant Institute
- Thesis: Adaptive Nonlinear Approximations. Advisor: Stèphane Mallat.
Durham, NC
1984–1988
B.S., Mathematics
- Graduated magna cum laude, with honors, May 1988. Majored in Math and Physics.
- Honors thesis: "Mathematical Models for Urban-Suburban Spread of Disease." Advisor: Leah Edelstein-Keshet.
Languages
- Python, Go, R, Ruby, JavaScript, C++, Java
Awards
- IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award (best paper in an IEEE journal by an author under 30), 2000.
- IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, 1999.
- NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 1996-1998.
- Gold medalist, New Media Magazine Multimedia Awards, 1993.
- Gold medalist, New York Festivals, 1992.
- Silver medalist, Association of Visual Communicators CINDY awards, 1992.
- NYU President's Service Award for Leadership for co-founding NYU OutReach, a community service focused freshman orientation program, New York University, 1992.
- Office of Naval Research / ASEE Graduate Fellowship, 1989-1993.
- Julia Dale Prize for Excellence in Mathematics, Duke University, 1988.
- North Carolina Mathematics Scholarship (4-year, full-tuition), Duke University, 1984-1988.
- Phi Beta Kappa, 1987.
Professional Activities
- Committee on Developing Science, Technology, and Innovation Indicators for the Future, National Research Council, 2011–2012.
- Wertheim Fellow, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School, 2004, 2007.
- Technical Advisory Board Member, Berkeley Electronic Press, 2007.
- Board of Directors, Plone Foundation, 2004–2006.
- Member of the Science and Engineering Workforce Project, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2001–2007.
Geoff Davis — Page 3
Selected Publications
From Google Applied Science
- Kevin McCloskey, Sixing Chen, Vincent R. Meijer, Joe Yue-Hei Ng, Geoff Davis, Carl Elkin, Christopher Van Arsdale, Scott Geraedts "Estimates of broadband upwelling irradiance from GOES-16 ABI," Remote Sensing of Environment, Volume 285, 1 February 2023, 113376. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2022.113376
- Marco Cuturi, Laetitia Meng-Papaxanthos, Yingtao Tian, Charlotte Bunne, Geoff Davis, Olivier Teboul "Optimal Transport Tools (OTT): A JAX Toolbox for all things Wasserstein," January 2022.
- Ali Bashir, Qin Yang, Jinpeng Wang, Stephan Hoyer, Wenchuan Chou, Cory McLean, Geoff Davis, Qiang Gong, Zan Armstrong, Junghoon Jang, Hui Kang, Annalisa Pawlosky, Alexander Scott, George E. Dahl, Marc Berndl, Michelle Dimon, B. Scott Ferguson, "Machine learning guided aptamer refinement and discovery," Nature Communications 12, Article number: 2366 (2021).
Postdoctoral Training
Recent reports have called for changes to the training of postdoctoral scientists and engineers. We examined the hypothesis that the practices advocated make a measurable difference in the experiences and productivity of postdoctoral researchers using data from a large-scale survey.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, "Improving the Postdoctoral Experience: An Empirical Approach." In Richard B. Freeman and Daniel L. Goroff (Eds.), Science and Engineering Careers in the United States: An Analysis of Markets and Employment, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, Doctors Without Orders. American Scientist 93 (3, supplement), 2005.
Nonlinear Wavelet Transforms
We examine the central issues of invertibility, stability, artifacts, and frequency-domain characteristics in the construction of non-linear analogs of the wavelet transform.
- Roger L. Claypoole, Jr., Geoffrey M. Davis, Wim Sweldens, and Richard G. Baraniuk "Nonlinear Wavelet Transforms for Image Coding via Lifting," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 12 No. 12, 1449-1459, Dec. 2003. DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2003.817237
- Roger L. Claypoole, Jr., Geoffrey M. Davis, Wim Sweldens, and Richard G. Baraniuk, "Nonlinear Wavelet Transforms for Image Coding," Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Vol. 1, 662-667, 1997. DOI: 10.1109/ACSSC.1997.680528
Wavelet-based Image Coding: An Overview
- Geoffrey M. Davis and Aria Nosratinia, "Wavelet-Based Image Coding: An Overview," Applied and Computational Control, Signals, and Circuits, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1998.
Multiwavelet Constructions
Lifting provides a simple method for constructing biorthogonal wavelet bases; we generalize lifting to the case of multiwavelets.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, Vasia Strela, Radka Turcajova, "Multiwavelet Construction via the Lifting Scheme," in Wavelet Analysis and Multiresolution Methods, T.-X. He (editor), Lecture Notes in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1999.
Science Policy
- Geoffrey M. Davis, "Mathematicians and the Market," Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 44, No. 10, pp. 1307-1315, 1997.
Significance Tree Quantization
We explore a generalization of several recent compression methods called significance tree quantization (STQ).
- Geoffrey M. Davis and Sumit Chawla, "Image Coding Using Optimized Significance Tree Quantization," Proc. Data Compression Conference, 1997, 387-396, 1997. DOI: 10.1109/DCC.1997.582064
Joint Source and Channel Coding
We describe a joint source/channel allocation scheme for transmitting images lossily over a block erasure channel such as the Internet with the goal of reducing image transmission latency.
- Geoffrey M. Davis and John Danskin, "Joint Source and Channel Coding for Image Transmission Over Lossy Packet Networks," SPIE Conference on Wavelet Applications of Digital Image Processing XIX, Denver, August 1996.
- John Danskin, Geoffrey M. Davis, and Xiyong Song, "Fast Lossy Internet Image Transmission," ACM Multimedia, San Francisco, November 1995.
A Wavelet-Based Analysis of Fractal Image Compression
Recipient of the 2000 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award
We introduce a new wavelet-based analytical framework for block-based fractal compression schemes.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, "A Wavelet-based Analysis of Fractal Image Compression," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 7, No. 2, 141-154, Feb. 1998. Recipient of the 2000 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award. DOI: 10.1109/83.660992
- Geoffrey M. Davis, "Implicit Image Models in Fractal Image Compression," Invited paper, SPIE Conference on Wavelet Applications in Signal and Image Processing IV, Denver, August 1996.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, "Adaptive Self-Quantization of Wavelet Subtrees: A Wavelet-Based Theory of Fractal Image Compression," SPIE Conference Wavelet Applications in Signal and Image Processing III, San Diego, July 1995. Earlier versions of this work appeared at the 1995 IEEE Data Compression Conference in Snowbird, Utah and at SPIE Wavelet Applications for Dual Use 1995, Orlando.
Adaptive Greedy Decompositions
We examine the problem of decomposing functions over redundant dictionaries of waveforms.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, Stéphane Mallat, and Marco Avellaneda, "Adaptive Greedy Approximations," Journal of Constructive Approximation, Vol. 13, 57-98, 1997.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, Stéphane Mallat, and Zhifeng Zhang, "Adaptive time-frequency decompositions with Matching Pursuit," Optical Engineering, Vol. 33, No. 7, pp. 2183-2191, July 1994.
- Geoffrey M. Davis, Adaptive Nonlinear Approximations, Ph.D. dissertation, 1994.