LLMs in Focus: From One-Size Fits All to Verticalized Solutions

Laurel Orr is an AI Staff Software Engineer at Stacklok working applying generative AI to data tasks. She graduated with a PhD in Databases and Data Management from Paul G Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and then was a PostDoc at Stanford working for Chris Ré in the HazyReserach Labs. Her research interests are broadly at the intersection of artifical intelligence, foundation models, and data management. She focuses on how to train, customize, and deploy foundation models to data tasks such as data cleaning, record matching, and generating code snippets for determinisitic data transformations. This includes problems around data curation for training, efficient model training and inference for batch workloads, and prompting paradigms for high performant, personalized models.

Venky brings over two decades of experience in software engineering and technical leadership to Numbers Station as SVP of Product & Engineering. Most recently, he served as General Manager leading several initiatives on query understanding and commerce in the ads product area at Google. Before that, he was CEO and co-founder of Mesh Dynamics, the API test automation company, which was acquired by Google in 2021. Prior to Mesh Dynamics, Venky was CTO and co-founder of Alation, the enterprise data catalog company, where he led technology and helped create the new data catalog product category.

At the moment Demetrios is immersing himself in Machine Learning by interviewing experts from around the world in the weekly MLOps.community meetups. Demetrios is constantly learning and engaging in new activities to get uncomfortable and learn from his mistakes. He tries to bring creativity into every aspect of his life, whether that be analyzing the best paths forward, overcoming obstacles, or building lego houses with his daughter.