Tereso del Río
I'm a Mathematician with a passion for improving and optimising algorithms.
My mathematical training allows me to deeply understand processes, identify redundancies, and find potential improvements. During my PhD I developed techniques to accelerate mathematical algorithms using machine learning, reducing the timings by up to 38% compared to the previous state-of-the-art.
Education
2020-2024 PhD, Coventry University, Mathematics and Computer Science
2019-2020 Master (M.S.), Universidad de Valladolid (Spain), Master's in Mathematical Research (final project)
2018-2019 (Erasmus year) B.S., Dundee University (Scotland), Mathematics
In my PhD project,
I used heuristics and machine learning to speed up a mathematical algorithm by making choices that affected the time needed to complete the algorithm but not the correctness of its output (more info). My thesis consisted of three chapters corresponding to...
...my Top 3 publications in which:
I used a complexity analysis to motivate a new state-of-the-art heuristic. (paper)
I improved the quality of the dataset used and shifted the machine learning paradigm to reduce the timings by up to 38%. (paper)
in collaboration with Lynn Pickering, we used explainable artificial intelligence to extract insights from these models to create a heuristic that became the new state-of-the-art. (paper)
These improvements were possible thanks to...
... my theoretical knowledge in machine learning
that I acquired during my master's and the final projects of my bachelor's and my master's degrees, in which I theoretically studied the performance that should be expected from a machine learning model given the quality of its dataset.
I'm also good at spotting enhancements within algorithms, ...
...my proudest improvement
For example, with six variables, the operations are reduced from 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 to only 4,294,967,296 after.
During my PhD, I served as a student representative
with the support of the direction and administrative staff of my research centre, I organised biweekly formal and informal events aimed at creating a supportive and collaborative environment. We also organised the first internal conference, which now runs annually.
During my PhD, I also had the opportunity to...
...develop my leadership skills
by supervising two master's students on their final projects, one concerning explainability in finance and another that developed a reinforcement learning model to play a game.
Additionally, I led the team that built the first CAD package for Macaulay2, an open-source software for algebra.
Awards
2024 PGR of the Year Award in the Centre for Computational Science and Mathematical Modelling
2023 General Public Winner of the Logic and Mathematical UK's National Games
2022 People's vote Winner of the "Tweet your Thesis" competition in Coventry University
2020 Award of Excellence in Degree for Master's students (poster)