Jack G. Conrad
782 Sunset Drive
St. Paul, MN 55123 USA
(651)-683-9380
Jack.Conrad @ acm.org
PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS
- Text-based retrieval systems, their design, implementation and optimization
- Natural language processing and scoring algorithms for text-based documents
- Corpus design, development and application in retrieval experiments
- Database selection and navigation technologies
- Duplicate document detection algorithms and optimizations
- Document clustering techniques and tools
- Document structure analysis
- Question answering
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Sept 2013-Present, Lead Research Scientist, Research & Development, Center for AI & Cognitive Computing, Thomson Reuters, St. Paul, MN
- Oversee and conduct research into technologies for search and data analytics;
- Develop, harness and evaluate state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to enable production-based business applications;
- Provide thought leadership to our internal parters on the deployment of next generation technologies to advance our business applications to meet customer needs.
August 2011-August 2013, Lead Research Scientist, Catalyst Lab, Thomson Reuters Global Resources, Baar, Switzerland
- Foster collaboration, innovation and the leveraging of corporate resources across Thomson Reuters' professional and markets divisions;
- Learn about the product ideas and technological needs existing in various business units across the company;
- Educate company business units about the enabling technologies provided by corporate Research & Development.
2009-July 2011, Senior Research Scientist, Research & Development, Thomson Reuters, St. Paul, MN
- Lead consulting efforts for technology transfer from research into new products and internal applications.
- Investigate appropriate techniques for question answering to provide sub-document responses to user research questions.
- Conducted experiments into clustering and cluster labeling for next generation legal search engine (WestlawNext).
- Engaged in semi-supervised learning research involving person entity resolution for state of art record matching (PeopleMap).
2000-2008, Senior Research Scientist, Research & Development, Thomson Legal & Regulatory, St. Paul, MN
- Serve a liaison for R&D with New Product Development groups for technology transfer from research into new products and internal operations.
- Researched and implemented resource discovery technology for Global Search applications in a massive operational environment consisting of over 20,000 databases that resulted in a ten-fold increase in usage of company's resource discovery tools.
- Developed and evaluated state-of-art algorithms for real-time identical and non-identical duplicate document detection applications harnessing rapid and compact digital signatures in a production repository managing over 60 million documents.
1997-1999, Senior Research Scientist, Computer Science Research, West Group, Eagan, MN
- Developed core technology for new online legal citator service generating $32 million a year and growing 30% annually.
- Launched research in state-of-art database discovery tools and guided their implementation in production environments.
- Designed, implemented, and formally evaluated new online information discovery resource responsible for efficient business solutions, resulting in tens of thousands of additional client transactions per year.
1994-1996, Research Scientist, New Search Technologies Group, West Publishing, Eagan, MN
- Researched new optimization algorithms for high-precision WIN natural language search engine, scaled to operate in full-text environments of several terabytes.
- Conducted and directed research in support of new information retrieval, data mining, text filtering, and text classification technologies.
- Designed and implemented a proper noun text-based extraction and presentation system / GUI which was reported on at SIGIR, the international search and retrieval conference.
- Studied the effect of variable stopword lists on the INQUERY retrieval engine's performance using standard online test collections.
- Performed independent research on stemming and case recovery algorithms.
- Trained graduate students and taught undergraduate courses in technical and business-related areas, sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages.
1984-1989, Secondary School Math and Science Instructor, U.S. Peace Corps, Swaziland (Southern Africa) and Togo (West Africa)
- Instructed High School and Lycée math classes, university-level calculus courses, and introductory science in preparation for strict national exams.
- Secured funding, designed and managed construction of a 40,000 liter community water reservoir that directly improved the health of hundreds of individuals in the surrounding community.
1980, Electrical Engineer, 3M Company, Business and Information Products Division, St. Paul, Minnesota
- Advanced the implementation of encryption technology for new generation fax machine
- Designed and developed a high-density data cartridge tape QA testing circuit and display
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
1991-92, Teaching Assistant, Intro to Computers Course (solely responsible for two weekly labs), UMass,
Dept. of Computer Science, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
1990-91, Foreign Language Instructor, English instruction to Majors, Business, and Graduate students,
East China University of Science & Technology, Shanghai, People's Republic of China
1987-89, Professeur au Lycée, Mathématiques, Lycée Kara, Kara, Togo
1984-87, High School Instructor, Math & Science, Ekukhanyeni High School, Manzini, Swaziland
1981-84, Teaching Assistant, Freshman English (fully responsible for class), U.B.C.,
Dept. of English, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
EDUCATION
1994 - M.S., Computer Science, University of Massachusetts -- Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
1984 - M.A., English/Linguistics, University of British Columbia -- Vancouver, B.C., Canada
1980 - Cert., European Studies Program, University of Minnesota -- London, England
1980 - B.S., Summa Cum Laude, Electrical Engineering, Marquette University -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Minor: English
SKILLS
- Languages: Java, Python, Perl, C, C++, Tcl/Tk, LISP, Gawk
- Object-Oriented Models: Java, OOA, OOD, MOOSE
- Machine Learning Toolkits: scikit-learn, WEKA, JSolar, CLUTO
- Web Technologies: XML, XSLT, JavaScript, CGI and HTML
- Operating Systems: UNIX: Linux OS, Macintosh, Windows
- Databases: Oracle, DB2 w/ SQL, PL/SQL
- SDKs & Software: IntelliJ, Eclipse, xemacs, gdb/ddd, gprof
- Hardware: Macintosh, IBM, Lenovo
PUBLICATIONS
Publications List
PRESENTATIONS (SELECTED)
PATENT WORK
- Jack G. Conrad and Jie Lin, "Information Retrieval Systems with Duplicate Document Detection and Presentation Functions," Thomson Legal & Regulatory, Research & Development, U.S. Patent App. Number 01/550,844, December, 2004.
- Jack G. Conrad and Joanne R.S. Claussen, "Database Discovery Framework: A Toolkit Approach to Database Selection in Textual and Other Data Collection Environments," Thomson Legal & Regulatory, Research & Development, U.S. Patent App. Number 60/436,191, December, 2002.
- Jack G. Conrad, Bob Haschart, Forrest Rhoads, Dan Dabney, Howard Turtle, Kinley Larntz, Po Yang, and Dan Gannon. "System and Method of Processing Formatted Text Documents in a Database," Thomson--West Group, U.S. Patent App. Number 09/120,170, 1998.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES
- French - completely fluent, conversational and written (F.S.I rating 3+), used in 14 French-speaking countries
- Spanish - functional, used in 8 Spanish-speaking countries
HONORS / SOCIETIES
- Eta Kappa Nu - National Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society (Past VP, Marquette Chapter)
- Tau Beta Pi - National Engineering Honor Society
- Alpha Sigma Nu - National Jesuit Honor Society
- Association of Computing Machinery - Member and author, published in SIGIR and CIKM Proceedings
BOARD MEMBERSHIPS
EXTRACURRICULAR AWARDS (SELECTED)
- Champion of the Year, EarthShare, 2000
For work to expand choice in West Group's Employee Giving Campaign (1994-99)
www.earthshare.org/news&resources/news.html (page 3)
- Sargent Shriver Peace Worker of the Year Award (1 of 2 Finalists), 1990
For secondary school teaching and rural water project successes while serving in the U.S Peace Corps in Southern and West Africa (1984-89)
- W.D. Bliss Cooperative Education Student of the Year Award, 1980
For internship contributions at 3M Company, St. Paul, MN (1977-80) while an undergraduate at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
- President, Minnesota Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (MN-RPCVs) (1997-98)
- Wrote proposal to host the 1999 National Peace Corps Association conference in St. Paul, for 1,000s of RPCVs, which beat out proposals from 3 other major U.S. cities, incl. NYC;
- Guided Conference Program Committee through preparations for national gathering.
- Ironman Races - successfully completed five full century bicycle competitions.
- Marathons - ran Chicago and Paavo Nurmi marathon races, breaking 3 3/4 hours.
- Mountain Climbing - climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa, up to Uhuru Peak (19,347 ft).