Damien Benveniste, PhD

Led development and execution of comprehensive AI/ML education platform, establishing market leadership in specialized ML training with focus on advanced ML fundamentals, LLM fine-tuning, deployment pipelines, and agentic AI systems.
• Built profitable education business from concept, developing multi-channel business model across newsletter subscriptions, educational courses and technical content that reached 130K subscribers and 4,300 students across 50 US states and 195 countries.
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Led development and execution of comprehensive AI/ML education platform, establishing market leadership in specialized ML training with focus on advanced ML fundamentals, LLM fine-tuning, deployment pipelines, and agentic AI systems.
• Built profitable education business from concept, developing multi-channel business model across newsletter subscriptions, educational courses and technical content that reached 130K subscribers and 4,300 students across 50 US states and 195 countries.
• Designed and implemented in-depth technical training covering transformer architecture internals, advanced fine-tuning methodologies, distributed training strategies, production ML systems including RAG pipeline architectures, inference optimization, agentic frameworks, and scalable deployment strategies that address real-world performance constraints.
• Successfully identified market gap in practical ML and LLM education, developing targeted curriculum that addressed specific industry needs, resulting in consistent 15% monthly subscriber growth in a highly competitive market.

https://newsletter.theaiedge.io/ Show less

I specialize in building large scale end to end Machine Learning capabilities. I can help you assess the AI readiness of your data and data infrastructures. I can architect the solutions, set KPIs, timelines, milestone and help in establishing a budget and headcount. I can train the models, deploy them and architect the infrastructures to support the Machine Learning solutions. I can coordinate the teams collaborations and train the teams as needed to maximize the success of the endeavors.

• Generated ~$40M in annualized additional revenue by developing and implementing low-fidelity evaluation, meta-learning (MAML), and joint feature-model optimization capabilities that improved predictive performance by ~1% across ~500 Ads ranking ML models responsible for ~96% of Meta's total revenue ($40B in 2021).
• Accelerated model development cycles by leading a team of 5 ML Engineers specializing in model development automation, reducing latency, and enhancing predictive performance… Show more

• Generated ~$40M in annualized additional revenue by developing and implementing low-fidelity evaluation, meta-learning (MAML), and joint feature-model optimization capabilities that improved predictive performance by ~1% across ~500 Ads ranking ML models responsible for ~96% of Meta's total revenue ($40B in 2021).
• Accelerated model development cycles by leading a team of 5 ML Engineers specializing in model development automation, reducing latency, and enhancing predictive performance across the organization's advertising infrastructure. Show less

• Led a team at Albert Corp. to develop advanced language models for chatbot systems, reducing customer service costs.
• Optimized cloud service operations at Rackspace by implementing ML solutions for ticket routing, improving efficiency.
• Enhanced OPSkins marketplace performance through ML models for pricing optimization and product recommendations, increasing sales.

I have joined Bluestem as a Senior Data Scientist to partake in the brand-new Data Science initiative that has been key for the company in generating $2B in annual revenue. This includes identifying inefficiencies and building predictive models for business optimization across domains such as marketing, credit analysis or sales. I have had the opportunity to develop and deploy numerous models using machine learning techniques and big data technologies. Some of my accomplishments are:
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I have joined Bluestem as a Senior Data Scientist to partake in the brand-new Data Science initiative that has been key for the company in generating $2B in annual revenue. This includes identifying inefficiencies and building predictive models for business optimization across domains such as marketing, credit analysis or sales. I have had the opportunity to develop and deploy numerous models using machine learning techniques and big data technologies. Some of my accomplishments are:
• Increasing by 10% the new customer acquisition rate through mailing campaigns using binary classification algorithms. • Enhancing customer experience with personalized product recommendation during call offers.
• Improving sales profit with price optimization across ~200,000 different products and inventory forecast.
• Developing new ECOA and FCRA compliant Machine learning techniques for adverse actionable credit worthiness prediction and credit line assignment.
• Deploying highly accurate sales forecast software for promotion campaigns. Show less

I have joined the California State University-Long Beach faculty to teach master students about Data Science. They have learned about Python programming, statistical inference and Machine Learning. We have explored different subjects such as Natural Language Processing, Monte Carlo simulations, Image analysis and Deep Learning. It has been a truly enriching experience to be able to guide students to become data scientists!

I have worked in a research team applying machine learning techniques to optimize products and create new technological advances:

• I have developed predictive models for HDD disks failure and file systems crash (R, python). I have extracted, analyzed and modeled data from a multi-terabyte Greenplum relational database (PostgreSQL) and from a Hadoop file system (PIG).
• I have designed new methods of feature selection for non-linear mixed data with a high number of missing values… Show more

I have worked in a research team applying machine learning techniques to optimize products and create new technological advances:

• I have developed predictive models for HDD disks failure and file systems crash (R, python). I have extracted, analyzed and modeled data from a multi-terabyte Greenplum relational database (PostgreSQL) and from a Hadoop file system (PIG).
• I have designed new methods of feature selection for non-linear mixed data with a high number of missing values using information theory techniques.
• I have designed new semi-supervised techniques of clustering to unmix data.
• I have applied Hidden Markov Modeling to backup file systems data labeling.
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• Developed machine learning algorithms for optimization of blood management (Java, R, Python, Hadoop).
• Developed data visualization tool for business intelligence (D3.js, Google App Engine, SQL).
• Developed iOS and Android mobile apps (Objective C, Android, AWS, DynamoDB, S3).

• Development of Energy dispatch algorithm integrated into a Monte Carlo Machine for energy valuation (C++, Python/Cython). • Development of derivatives pricing methods in energy markets Development and enhancement and maintenance of stochastic models for demand and price, network congestion, gas storage and transportation.