Dan MacKinlay

1 Research interests

I’m a statistician and musician from Australia. Musician should be clear. Statistician, though, what’s that? A statistician is the exact same thing as a data scientist or machine learning researcher with the difference that there are qualifications needed to be a statistician, and that we are snarkier.

My particular application specialities are the application of statistical inference to AI Safety and to the process of scientific discovery, especially in geospatial settings. My methods of interest are point process inference, compressive sensing, Gaussian processes, sequential Monte Carlo methods, factor graphs, differentiable learning, branching processes, Hilbert-space methods in high-dimensional inference, and stochastic differential equations.

2 Spatial and professional positions

I’ve been based at various times at such locations as

• Zürich, Switzerland, where I did my MSc in statistics under Professors Sara van de Geer and Didier Sornette at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
• Sydney, Australia, where I visualised data for the Powerhouse Museum under Seb Chan,
• Bandung, Indonesia, where I worked on interactive music with Common Room with Gustaff Harriman Iskandar and Robi Rusdiana,
• University of New South Wales Sydney, where I undertook graduate studies with Zdravko Botev,
• I’m currently employed at CSIRO in the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Future Science Platform researching topics in hybrid machine learning methods for physical sciences. (i.e. combining statistical inference, neural nets and the laws of physics to solve messy problems in science).

Minimalist CV here.

3 Contact me

If you have projects that have a budget for data science, statistics or machine learning, AI or whatever they call it this week, let me know. My current contract will not last forever.

If you do not have a budget but believe your cause is righteous, you are welcome to pitch to me for a slice of my volunteer time. Send a short paragraph making a case for what that time will help (I tend to favour climate- and conflict-risk mitigation causes) and why you think it will be a high-leverage use of my time towards that goal.

Contact form here.

4 Follow me

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You can find me on hypothes.is, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, …

orcid.org/0000-0001-6077-2684

5 Projects

• The most obvious one is this very site, concerning whatever shiny thing distracted me and needed notes taken. My references are online, in particular my own publications.
• On that note, see my Google scholar.
• Lotekno, a Sundanese pop/electronic dance music crossover collaboration that I co-founded.
• Bodywerk, my slammin’ DJ project.
• Synestizer, an audiovisual synthesizer for which I was technical lead.
• Efek Samping, my solo abstract electronic art music project.
• My github hosts various software I wrote.

6 Values and metrics

By the ClearerThinking.org’s Intrinsic Values Test, my intrinsic values are

1. That I increase my understanding of reality beyond my current understanding
2. That humanity does not go extinct
3. That I feel connected to other people
4. That I believe true rather than false things
5. That beautiful things continue to come into existence (e.g. art or music)
6. That I get to experience a wide variety of different things during my life

7 My face

Thanks to Abdelwahed Khamis for that portrait.