Aerobotics recently announced that Artificial Intelligence expert and leader, Stuart Reid has joined the company as the new Head of Data Science to help drive and grow their capabilities.
Aerobotics is a data analytics company based in South Africa, it uses aerial imagery and machine learning algorithms to optimize crop performance for farmers around the world through its cloud based web application, Aeroview.
He will establish new processes and frameworks for rapidly-prototyping and scaling state of the art computer vision models for use within existing and upcoming Aerobotics products.
“I am excited to join Aerobotics and help them further their machine learning technology and bring more value and insights to their customers and agriculture partners around the world. I believe we are establishing ourselves as experts in precision farming and machine learning and can go toe to toe with the biggest names in the world,” said Reid.
Stuart Reid graduated Cum Laude from the University of Pretoria where he was a member of the Computational Intelligence Research Group, which focuses on artificial swarm intelligence. He has established himself as an expert in the field through various achievements, including speaking at the Deep Learning Indaba in 2018, Africa’s largest artificial intelligence event. At 26, he was one of South Africa’s youngest fund managers and South Africa’s youngest amateur radio ham at age 11.
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Stuart will work under Aerobotics Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Benji Meltzer. They plan to tackle the incorporation of domain knowledge from agronomists into machine learning algorithms and the application of machine learning to the design and development of new machine learning models using a new technique known as AutoML.
“Bringing Stuart Reid on board is a massive step for the technical side of the business,” said Meltzer. ”Stuart has already made a name for himself in the machine learning world, and we are excited to work together in combining his knowledge and skills to help revolutionize the agriculture industry by creating novel products that add clear, actionable value to farmers.”
Stuart says Aerobotics’ customers love for the product and the challenge of developing new and improved computer vision algorithms for precision farming are the main motivators for him joining the team. He looks forward to being a part of the fast-paced growth Aerobotics has achieved during the last couple years.
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