Data Science

The day job

About

I'm Ken Reid — a Senior Data Scientist at Rocket Mortgage with a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Stirling. My research spans evolutionary computation, optimization, and machine learning, with publications at top venues including GECCO and IEEE SSCI. I design and build data-driven solutions across Python, Java, JavaScript, and more — from automated testing frameworks to large-scale optimization systems. I'm currently pursuing a master's degree in Organizational Leadership, pairing the technical side of my work with the people side of leading teams.

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Fields and tools

Research Interests

  • Data Science
  • Optimization
  • Evolutionary Computation
  • Generative AI
  • Machine Learning
  • Genetic Programming
  • Metaheuristics
  • Deep Learning

Keywords

  • Python
  • Java
  • SQL
  • R
  • Lua
  • Pandas
  • NumPy
  • Scikit-learn
  • TensorFlow
  • Jupyter
  • LEAP & DEAP
  • Hyperparameter Tuning
  • Docker & Kubernetes
  • Git
  • Linux
Research

Publications

185 citations on Google Scholar

  1. An interdisciplinary outlook on large language models for scientific research

    J Boyko, J Cohen, N Fox, MH Veiga, JI Li, J Liu, B Modenesi, AH Rauch, KN Reid, S Tribedi, A Visheratina, X Xie

    arXiv 2023 66 citations DOI PDF

  2. Heuristic hyperparameter optimization of deep learning models for genomic prediction

    J Han, C Gondro, K Reid, JP Steibel

    G3 2021 65 citations DOI

  3. Optimizing LLVM Pass Sequences with Shackleton: A Linear Genetic Programming Framework

    H Peeler, SS Li, AN Sloss, KN Reid, Y Yuan, W Banzhaf

    GECCO Companion 2022 14 citations DOI

  4. A hybrid metaheuristic approach to a real world employee scheduling problem

    KN Reid, J Li, A Brownlee, M Kern, N Veerapen, J Swan, G Owusu

    GECCO 2019 11 citations DOI

  5. BatchPlanet: Batch access and processing of PlanetScope imagery for spatiotemporal analysis in R

    Y Song, AR Bevington, KN Reid, J Zhu, Y Liu, K Zhu

    JOSS 2026 1 citation DOI

  6. Temporal Coupling Between Linguistic Arousal and Heart Rate Variability During Emotional Sharing

    X Jia, AS Wormley, KN Reid, M Gevonden, E Pruss, et al.

    PsyArXiv 2026 DOI

  7. Genetic improvement in the Shackleton framework for optimizing LLVM pass sequences

    SS Li, H Peeler, AN Sloss, KN Reid, W Banzhaf

    GECCO Companion 2022 7 citations DOI PDF

  8. Benchmarking of the Shackleton Genetic Programming Framework for LLVM Compiler Optimization

    S Li, H Peeler, KN Reid, A Sloss, Y Yuan, W Banzhaf

    Poster 2021 DOI

  9. The Factory Must Grow: Automation in Factorio

    KN Reid, I Miralavy, S Kelly, W Banzhaf, C Gondro

    GECCO Companion 2021 9 citations DOI PDF Watch it run

  10. Metaheuristics For Solving Real World Employee Rostering and Shift Scheduling Problems

    KN Reid

    PhD thesis 2019 1 citation PDF (6.7 MB)

  11. Shift Scheduling and Employee Rostering: An Evolutionary Ruin & Stochastic Recreate Solution

    KN Reid, J Li, N Veerapen, J Swan, A McCormick, M Kern, G Owusu

    CEEC 2018 2 citations DOI Watch it run

  12. Variable Neighbourhood Search: A Case Study for a Highly-Constrained Workforce Scheduling Problem

    KN Reid, J Li, J Swan, A McCormick, G Owusu

    IEEE SSCI 2016 9 citations DOI Watch it run

View All on Google Scholar →
Ph.D., 2019

Doctoral Thesis

Metaheuristics for Solving Real World Employee Rostering and Shift Scheduling Problems

University of Stirling · July 2019 · Supervised by Dr Jingpeng Li · Funded by BT and the EPSRC DAASE Project

Real-world employee rostering and shift scheduling, solved with state-of-the-art metaheuristics: Variable Neighbourhood Search, Evolutionary Ruin & Stochastic Recreate, and hybrid matheuristics combining metaheuristics with Integer Programming, evaluated against real-world data provided by BT.

Read the full thesis (PDF, 6.7 MB) →
On video

Featured Talk

"The Factory Must Grow: Automation in Factorio"

Seminar for the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Michigan State University · 21,000+ views

Open source

Portfolio

Projects and interactive tools

Things you can run

The apps live on Streamlit's free hosting, which puts an app to sleep when nobody has used it for a while. If one opens on a sleep screen, press its button to wake it and give it about thirty seconds.

Steam Stats Visualized

Paste your Steam profile and get your gaming life roasted. Gaming personality, head-to-head comparisons, achievement stats, account value estimation, genre breakdown, and downloadable summary cards.

Try it on Streamlit →

GoodReads Reading Stats

Upload your GoodReads export and discover your reading personality, genre breakdown, rating analysis, fun page facts, and a quotes collection tool with themed PDF/HTML/Markdown export.

Try it on Streamlit →

Debt Payoff Simulator

Compare Avalanche vs Snowball debt repayment strategies with interactive charts. Balance transfer analysis, sensitivity modeling, bi-weekly payments, and customizable summary cards.

Try it on Streamlit →

Letterboxd Roasted

Upload your Letterboxd data export and get absolutely roasted. Film personality types, data-driven roast commentary, multi-user comparison, contrarian scores, and shareable summary cards.

Try it on Streamlit →

Research, Live

Each part takes one piece of my published research, rebuilds it as something running in your browser, and hands you the parameters.

A series on the blog

Algorithms, Live

Each part puts one algorithm running live in your browser, with the important parameters as sliders, so you can cause the famous failure modes yourself.

A series on the blog

Code and notebooks

EasyViewerPDF

Electron desktop app for PDF workflows: split documents into pages and compare multiple pages side by side in a malleable, keyboard-accessible grid.

JavaScript Electron

FactorioBeltProblemGECCO

Factorio game interface for optimizing belt balancer layouts using evolutionary computation. Companion code for the GECCO '21 paper.

Python Lua ★ 30

VAE for Molecule Discovery

Variational Autoencoder for drug discovery — generating novel molecular structures using deep generative models.

Jupyter Notebook

CNN X-Ray Classifier

Convolutional Neural Network for pneumonia detection from chest X-ray images — a deep learning tutorial for medical imaging.

Jupyter Notebook

NLP Text Analysis Toolkit

Generalized NLP pipeline — topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and text classification using modern natural language processing techniques.

Jupyter Notebook

Simulated Annealing

Interactive Google Colab demonstration of Simulated Annealing — reconstructing a target string with visualized convergence, temperature decay, and acceptance probability.

Jupyter Notebook

Introductory Data Science

Hands-on machine learning tutorials in Google Colab — covering classification, regression, unsupervised learning, MLPs, CNNs, and RNNs.

Jupyter Notebook

Global Temperature Analysis

Data pipeline using R, SQL Server, and Tableau to analyze long-term global temperature trends and climate patterns.

R SQL
View All on GitHub →
Writing

Blog

Technical write-ups and project deep-dives.

All on the blog →
Get in touch

Let's Collaborate

The fastest route is email: ken@kenreid.co.uk, or the contact page. New posts on data science land in the free newsletter. Profiles, for the diligent: