Thomas ManziniPhD Student - Computer Vision & Robotics for Disaster Response
About
My research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and disaster response. Specifically, how to improve the robustness and usability of automated systems in extreme environments. This research has been deployed operationally during the COVID-19 pandemic and at Hurricanes Helene and Debby and my work has been covered in the press by The Weather Channel and Accuweather. I am currently a PhD student with Dr. Robin Murphy at Texas A&M University, and my research is funded by the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM).
I grew up in Las Vegas, and I enjoy running, hiking, spending time outdoors, and I am also an Instrument Rated Commercial Pilot, Advanced EMT, and a Firefighter.
Developed and deploying machine learning models for change summarization in word documents. Led machine learning infrastructure and modeling efforts for a team of multiple engineers and scientists working on summarizing changes in word documents. Developed, deployed, and evaluated crowdsourcing experiments for multiple data annotation tasks.
Software Engineer, Microsoft AI Development Acceleration Program (2018-2020)
Developed and tested custom neural architecture search algorithms on 35+ GPUs. Applied various deep learning models to fuse features from multiple modalities for classification. Performed analysis of users and user behavior in the Microsoft Office Platform. Developed statistically learned representations for commands in the Microsoft Office platform for use in downstream machine learning models.
Pinterest
Intern – Software Engineer, Ads Ranking Team (summer 2016)
Developed an automated data workflow for processing large scale refunds for advertisers who are billed through both credit cards and invoices Data Workflow written in the Hive query language, and Python Results presented to the Ads Serving and Ranking team
LinkedIn
Intern – Software Engineer, Digits – Growth and Lifecycle Team (summer 2015)
Developed backend Hadoop flow for phone collection splash screen and desktop banner. Developed parallelizable backend code in Java to map LinkedIn user names to phone numbers for name checking during an address book import. Results of primary intern project presented to LinkedIn CEO.
Bloomberg L.P.
Consultant – Software Engineer, Fixed Income - Search Team (fall 2014-spring 2015)
Intern – Software Engineer, Fixed Income - Search Team (summer 2014)
Participated in Fixed Income Search project selected for presentation to Michael Bloomberg Primary project selected for presentation to Bloomberg Co-Founder & Head of Fixed Income Developed Advanced Data Analysis, a pivot table toolset for performing “groupbys” and aggregations on all Fixed Income securities using Python and Cython
Hover Inc.
Intern – Software Engineer, The Prometheus Project (summer 2013)
Developed heat map based point cloud visualization module in Python Translated code from C++ to Python for “Moneyshot” visualization
Texas A&M University School of Computer Science & Engineering
Doctor of Philosophy - Computer Science (In progress)
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Master of Language Technologies (August 2018)
Master of Science in Language Technologies with research experience in semantic parsing, crowdsourcing linguistic datasets, synthetic speech understanding, and multimodal sentiment analysis.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (May 2016)
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with research experience in natural language processing and applications of DeepQA in word puzzles.
CMU Graduate Research Fellowship (2016 - 2018)
Graduate student research fellowship providing complete tuition coverage, a monthly stipend, and travel expense coverage.
Stanley I. Landgraf Prize '46
An annual prize established to honor Stanley Landgraf, Rensselaer Trustee, Acting President of RPI, and friend of the Computer Science Department. The prize is given to the RPI computer science major who excels in leadership skills and academic achievement.
Member - Palanx Leadership Honors Society
Phalanx Honor Society was founded in 1912 as a way to recognize Rensselaer students who distinguished themselves among their peers in areas of leadership, service, and devotion to the alma mater. Today, Phalanx is Rensselaer’s prestigious senior honor society. Its membership consists of junior, senior, and graduate students. Additionally, members of the RPI community demonstrating dedication and devotion to the Institute are inducted as honorary members to Phalanx.
President (2015-16) - Upsilon Pi Epsilon, NY Eta Chapter, Computer Science Honors Society
UPE is the first and only international honor society in the Computing and Information Disciplines. The mission of UPE is to recognize academic excellence at both the undergraudate and graudate levels in the Computing and Information Disciplines. It has recieved endorsements from the two largest computer organizations in the world, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). UPE is also a member of the Association of College Honor Societies.
Additional Honors & Awards
Rensselaer Leadership Award & Scholarship RPI Dean's Honor List & RPI Dean's List Presidential Volunteer Service Award - Gold Level Presidential Volunteer Lifetime Service Award
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Ambulance
Positions Held: Captain, Training Committee Chair Ranks Achieved: Duty Supervisor, Crew Chief (Trainer), Driver (Trainer) RPI Ambulance was founded in 1977 as the first EMS agency in Troy and the surrounding area. Today, RPIA serves the RPI campus as well as some of the surrounding towns. Mainly responding to on-campus calls, but also responding to mutual aid calls to Brunswick, North Greenbush (including Wynantskill and Defreestville), and Poestenkill. RPI Ambulance is a student run and operated Basic Life Support (BLS) transporting ambulance agency that serves the RPI campus and surrounding communities. The department responds to approximately 150 to 200 calls and provide first aid coverage to about 30 special events every academic year.
Newton Fire Department
Ranks Achieved: Interior Firefighter, Advanced Emergency Medical Technician The Newton Fire Department aims to provide the best fire and ems services the town deserves and to create a predictable and sustainable future by proactive leadership and sound management policies
Edgewood Volunteer Fire Department
Ranks Achieved: Interior Firefighter, Emergency Medical Technician The Edgewood Volunteer Fire Department was founded as a volunteer fire company to protect the lives, property, and quality of life of the citizens of the Borough of Edgewood. The EVFD responds to fire, medical, and other emergencies in Edgewood and the surrounding Boroughs, as well as the Penn Lincoln Parkway (I-376) stretch that spans from the Squirrel Hill Tunnel to the Forest Hills exit.
Carnegie Mellon University Emergency Medical Services
Ranks Achieved: Responder CMU EMS is completely run by students and continues to meet state standards of excellence for patient care. With minimum staffing by at least one EMT and all members certified in CPR and First Aid, CMU EMS provides 24-7 medical coverage and has an average response time of under 5 minutes. Members are commited to serving others and receive no compensation for their time. This includes daily shifts, standby for events, and classes for the community.
RPI Science Ambassadors
The RPI Science Ambassadors (SA) are an assembly of undergraduate students focused on inspiring a younger audience to explore the role of science in society. The SA's develop highly engaging presentations and hands-on demonstrations to bring science to life in K-12 classrooms, and help students define the relevance between their classroom learning and real world applications.
