Education
- University of California at Berkeley (advisor Stuart Russell)
Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2009 - University of California at Berkeley
B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with honors, 1998
Experience
- Google, Software Engineer, (2013 – present)
- Working on Image search
- Yahoo, Senior Software Engineer, (2011 – 2013)
- Implemented key changes needed for personalization on www.yahoo.com
- Added dynamic diversity rule processing
- Optimized business rule constraint solver
- Created a news article deduping system
- Yahoo, Software Engineer, (2009 – 2011)
- Built recommendation system for web applications leveraging social signals
- Wrote an abuse detection prototype system for user profiles
- University of California at Berkeley, Graduate Student Researcher, (1999 – 2009)
- Developed efficient reinforcement learning algorithms for motor control problems
- Improved the learning performance of policy search methods by leveraging an agent’s sensor data
- Applied algorithms to a simulated dart throwing problem and for a simulated quadruped robot locomotion task
Skills
Programming: C/C++, Java, Python, PHP
Relevant Coursework: Statistical learning theory, Combinatorial algorithms and data structures, Linear programming, Knowledge representation, Probabilities and random processes, Linear systems theory, Computer vision, and Natural language processing
Honors and Awards
- National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow
- Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM) Ph.D. Science Fellow
- Eta Kappa Nu, Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society
Highly Refereed Publications
- Gregory Lawrence and Stuart Russell. Improving Gradient Estimation by Incorporating Sensor Data. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Helsinki, Finland, 2008.
- Gregory Lawrence, Noah Cowan, and Stuart Russell. Efficient Gradient Estimation for Motor Control Learning. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Acapulco, Mexico, 2003.
Other Publications
- Gregory Lawrence, Aurora Skarra-Gallagher, and Zhichen Xu. Leveraging Social Connections Im- proves the Performance of a Recommendation System for Yahoo! Web Applications. To Appear In Yahoo! Tech Pulse, Santa Clara, CA, 2010.
- Mark A. Paskin and Gregory Lawrence. Junction Tree Algorithms for Solving Sparse Linear Systems. Technical Report UCB/CSD-03-1271, University of California, Berkeley, 2003.
Workshops
- Gregory Lawrence. Improving Gradient Estimation by Incorporating Sensor Data. NIPS Workshop on Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning, Whistler, B.C., Canada, 2007.
Teaching Experience
- Teaching Assistant, C.S. 188 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, U.C. Berkeley, Fall 2004
- Teaching Assistant, C.S. 188 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, U.C. Berkeley, Spring 2002
Academic Services
- Graduate student reviewer, U.C. Berkeley EECS Graduate Admissions, 2008-2009
- Active member, Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students, 2005-2008
- System Administrator, Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students, 2003-2004
- Panel Member, “Defining and Sustaining Quality Mentoring”, Richard Tapia Conference 2003 Vice President, Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students, 2001-2003
- System Administrator, Black Graduate Engineering and Science Students, 1999-2001