Richmond, Virginia
Will Russ
Machine learning engineer & data scientist
I design experiments and build analytics and ML systems that turn promising ideas into practical results.
For a decade, I worked on consumer research for Fortune 500 R&D teams, analyzing dozens of controlled experiments and building production ML systems and software that helped decision-makers act on the results. I hold an M.S. in Computer Science with a specialization in Machine Learning from Georgia Tech.
Selected work
-
Cortex Life
A household-management platform I designed, built, and operate. It retrains an XGBoost behavioral model nightly, uses MLflow to evaluate challenger models before promotion, explains predictions with SHAP, and uses an LLM-assisted pipeline that extracts structured receipt data, assigns per-field confidence scores, and routes low-confidence fields for human review.
-
Consumer experimentation and modeling
I worked on dozens of controlled consumer studies, both in person and online, for companies across industries, including a leading global streaming service and major personal care and food & beverage brands. My work included experimental design and execution, segmentation and preference modeling, drivers-of-liking analysis, and TURF and portfolio optimization that client teams used to select product lineups.
-
Numerical engine rewrite
I rewrote the legacy Fortran engine at the core of IFPrograms, a commercial analytics product, in modern C++ with comprehensive test coverage. One critical routine now runs over 1,000× faster.
-
Decision-support platforms
I built analytics applications with React, TypeScript, .NET, C++, and AWS that let stakeholders interact with model outputs and apply them to business decisions.
-
Teaching
I contributed to or led more than 20 short courses on machine learning, experimental design, and consumer research for audiences of researchers, marketers, lawyers, and regulators. I also gave talks at two industry conferences.
Now
I run Summitline Solutions, a Richmond-based consulting practice helping businesses with AI readiness, evaluation of AI systems and models, analytics, and custom software. I also apply these ideas in my own work: Cortex Life puts many of the engineering practices I recommend into production.
Work with me
Have a problem involving machine learning, analytics, or custom software? Tell me what you're working on.