Long Form Resume

Software Engineer/Architect, Data Scientist, ex-Game Developer

I'm passionate about understanding deep time, complex systems using big data and software, advanced collaboration and team structures, large scale data software architecture, molecular simulation, evolution, biological networks, game development, UX, in roughly that order. Open to collaboration whenever the opportunity presents, as small teams are best positioned for exploration of the unknown.

Currently building complex things for complex teams

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dionwhitehead/
• GitHub: https://github.com/dionjwa

Experience

5 years developing machine learning infrastructure, 2+ years developing cloud-computing infrastructure for scientific applications, 7+ years developing large scale online/social/mobile games and infrastructure, 3 years as post-doc working in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics.

2019-2024

Senior Software Engineer at Sony AI

• Building and architecting ML infrastructure and researcher focused tools
• Full stack: building and architecting backend machinery and front end visualization

2017-2019

Senior Software Engineer at Cogitai, Inc.

• Co-designed the technology stack for Cogitai's reinforcement learning APIs.
• Built from the ground-up, balancing current team abilities with optimal new technology

Technology word salad: golang, python, javascript/typescript/react, terraform, AWS

2014-2017

Senior Software Engineer at Autodesk Life Sciences (defunct 2018)

NB: My name was Dion Amago back then

• Worked on molecular simulation applications and Genetic Constructor.
• Integrated super interesting scientific tools into more accessible versions

Technology stack: Node.js, Javascript, Docker, Redis, AWS Cloudformation, Python, Haxe, React.

2012-2014

Lead Mobile Engineer at Idle Gaming for "Fresh Deck Poker" [iOS Google Amazon Facebook].

• Led a small team that published the iOS and Android versions of Fresh Deck Poker in record amount of time without compromising performance, by using the right combination of technology and people.
• Developed for both the front-end client and the back-end systems, ensuring maximum of performance, development velocity, and long-term maintainability+flexibility in the codebase.

Technology stack: Cross-platform front-end (Cocos2d-x, Objective-C, C++, Java, Lua), mostly Python back-end.

2008 -- 2010

Software Developer at Three Rings Design, Philadelphia.

• Prototyped and developed flash social games.

2005 -- 2008

Postdoc at the Institute of Evolution & Biodiversity, Münster University, Germany.

• Collaborated with biologists to analyze a large and unique data set, providing unique software tools due to my deep understanding of the data, the statistical methods, and the possibilities of multiple interconnected software packages.

Education

• PhD in Bioinformatics, CebiTec Graduate School, Bielefeld University, Germany. Grade: 1.0. Link to thesis: http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/publication/2306211
• Post-graduate Diploma in Genetics, Massey University, New Zealand.
• B.Sc. Immunology & Virology, Massey University, New Zealand.

Open source projects

• Metapages: https://metapage.io
  • https://app.metapages.org
  • All metaframes
• All GitHub projects: http://github.com/dionjwa

Publications

• Publications

tip

When I married I changed my name from "Dion John Whitehead" to "Dion John Whitehead Amago", then I got divorced and reversed it back to "Dion John Whitehead"

Academic Publications (2004 - 2022)

• Outracing champion Gran Turismo drivers with deep reinforcement learning. Wurman, P.R., Barrett, S., Kawamoto, K. et al. Nature 602, 223–228 (2022)
• The look-ahead effect of phenotypic mutations.. D. Whitehead, Claus Wilke, D. Vernazobres and E. Bornberg-Bauer. Biology Direct* (2008).
• The AtGenExpress global stress expression data set: Protocols, evaluation and model data analysis of UV-B light, drought and cold stress responses. J. Kilian, D. Whitehead, J. Horak, D. Wanke, S. Weinl, O. Batistic, C. D'Angelo, E. Bornberg-Bauer, J. Kudla and K. Harter. Plant J (2007).
• Chapter 13: Evolution of Regulatory Networks, Systems Biology Applied to Toxicogenomics. Amelie Veron, Dion Whitehead, et. el François Képès (ed.). World Scientific (2007).
• Reconstructing gene function and gene regulatory networks in prokaryotes. Dion Whitehead. PhD Thesis (2005).
• Handbook of Toxicogenomics: Strategies and Applications 13: Systems Biology Applied to Toxicogenomics. Klaus Prank, Matthias Hoechsmann, Bjoern Oleson, Thomas Schmidt, Leila Taher, Dion Whitehead, Jürgen Borlak (ed.). John Wiley & Sons (2005).
• Evaluating an Evolutionary Approach for Reconstructing Gene Regulatory Networks. Whitehead, D. and Skusa, A. and Kennedy, P.J. Ninth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (2004).