Robert Elwell

Software Architect

AetherQuest Solutions

9/10 -- Present

Responsibile for the design of solutions and development processes for software in the event management space. This includes evaluating the fitness of product components, identifying areas of improvement, tasking developers with specific projects, and identifying appropriate approaches to implementing new functionalities and addressing bugs in a Zend Framework application.

Technical Advisor

Global Workforce, LLC

10/11 -- Present

Providing expertise in best practices for web application development workflows as well as best practices in application architecture. Currently introducing state-of-the-art processes for version control, project management, and release management to MyStaff.com, an international work-from-home recruiting platform.

Technology Consultant

Self-Employed

9/10 -- Present

Lending PHP expertise from end-to-end site development to WordPress blog maintenance. MailChimp Integration Fund Awardee for PHP Point of Sale Integration. Also consulting in search engine optimization, with an emphasis on using concepts in computational linguistics, graph theory, and other quantitative methods to improve search engine ranking for targeted keywords.

Web Developer

Vertive, Inc. -- Publisher of Offers.com

12/08 -- 9/10

One of the main developers of Offers.com, a leading-edge Zend Framework website. Implementer and maintainer of site search and autocomplete. Main developer in charge of page SEO features -- including developing and implementing coherent formulas along with supporting formula exceptions. Responsible for mailing list maintenance and upkeep, as well as the delivery and creation of weekly newsletters. Considerable front-end development across the site. During this time, developed Sesh to address session memory usage issues in the Zend Framework using the "NoSQL" storage solution Redis. Contributed to a variety of open-source projects, including FancyBox and solr-php-client.

Computational Linguist

Apogee Search

5/08 -- 12/08

Created a suite of internal tools to assist client services teams to research, interpret, and report SEO and PPC data. Sole developer of internal tool, "The Website Report Card", which used over 40 data points to grade a website on its SEO viability for particular keywords. This integrated a variety of self-designed tools with APIs from Google, Yahoo, and others. Developed and implemented protocols for implementing Google tracking on client sites. Wrote numerous blog posts for the Apogee Search Blog in the area of SEO and language technology, many of which are listed here.

Teaching/Research Assistant

University of Texas at Austin

2007 -- 5/08

Research assistant for a project funded by the National Science Foundation. Achieved state-of-the-art results in addressing a classification problem in the area of computational discourse. Built a roll-your-own parser in Python, which is now available via open source, known as MRG Utils. Contributed to solving problems in coreference resolution, including code available in the PyCoLi package.

Assisted in the teaching of an introductory computational linguistics class, with a curriculum aiming to teach the discipline through practical applications. Covered cryptography, spell checking, chat bots and general AI, and regular expressions.

University of Texas

Master's Degree in Linguistics

5/08

Empirical linguistics with a computational focus. Master's Thesis: Robust Methods for Automated Discourse Connective Argument Head Identification. During this time, published numerous papers and presented multiple conferences -- mainly in the areas of computational linguistics, Bantu language, and how frequency shapes language as a system, and how it affects that system over time.

State University of New York at Albany

Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics -- Honors Track

5/05

Descriptive linguistics focusing on Bantu phonology, morphosyntax. Worked with a native speaker of Ekegusii, a Bantu language, to describe its verbal morphology. Discovered a purely tonal habitual morpheme attached to the final vowel. Francine W. Frank Award for Excellence in Linguistics recipient.