Avital Oliver

[email protected]

linkedin.com/in/avitaloliver

Summary
*** List of publications included at the end ***

Experience
AI Infrastructure
OpenAI
May 2023 - Present (10 months)

President
The Global Math Circle
Jul 2021 - Present (2 years 8 months)

AI Research and Infrastructure, Google Brain

Google
Jan 2019 - May 2023 (4 years 5 months)
Select projects:

• Tech Lead on Flax (https://github.com/google/flax), the most commonly used JAX library in the world.
Grew project from 10 to 1000s of users, in Google, Hugging Face and many other projects. Flax is now
used by all large models trained at Google, such as winning MLPerf submissions, Vision Transformers,
Bard and many many more.

• Weather prediction with neural networks

• State-of-the-art semisupervised learning

• Scaling Vision Transformers to 22 Billion Parameters

• Additional yet-unpublished work on memory-efficient scaling techniques for even larger models

Senior Research Engineer, Google Brain

Google
Jul 2018 - Dec 2018 (6 months)

Brain Resident
Google
Jul 2017 - Jul 2018 (1 year 1 month)
Working on the Google Brain team on machine learning research, currently focusing on semi-
supervised learning and dimensionality reduction/representation learning. Also looking at ways to apply
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mathematical insight to improve machine learning techniques and neural network architecture design,
using ideas from fields such as probabilistic models, optimization, information theory and statistics.

Research Intern
OpenAI
May 2017 - Jul 2017 (3 months)
Worked on applying unsupervised learning and self-supervised learning models to improve classifiers.

Advisor: Durk Kingma

Independent Software Consultant

Oliver Consulting Group
Feb 2016 - Apr 2017 (1 year 3 months)
I assist with a variety of software engineering projects and maintain a relationship with experts in
particular specialty fields. If in doubt whether I can help, let's talk -- I probably can.

Most recently, I've been focusing on real-time/reactive full stack data frameworks and scalable backend
architectures for web applications. Here are some projects I've worked on recently:

* Asana: Open sourcing their real time full stack data framework, "Luna2". I decoupled Luna2 from
internal systems and delivered a standalone Kubernetes/Docker version of the Luna2 developer and
deployment environment. This was the first time Luna2 was useable outside of the Asana environment.
Based on that experience, I devised a plan for their VP of Engineering for open sourcing the framework.
Luna2 is written in TypeScript and Scala.

* Formative (goformative.com): Ensuring backend can handle scale for new launch. I started with a
load test on that Formative's new app, written in Meteor. This load test demonstrated that their app
will not handle expected usage at launch. I identified the most costly part of the app and rewrote it
with a custom implementation while maintaining the same APIs on the client. This allowed the team to
continue iterating on the product in parallel to the data layer rewrite.

* Lever: Releasing ShareDB 1.0. Lever runs on an open-source full stack Operational Transform-
based realtime framework called Derby, written in JavaScript. ShareDB is the OT-enabled database
abstraction layer behind Derby. I am working with the CTO at Lever to optimize and improve ShareDB
and release ShareDB 1.0, the first production-ready version of the framework.

Member
South Park Commons
Apr 2016 - Feb 2017 (11 months)

Core Developer
Meteor Software
May 2012 - Feb 2016 (3 years 10 months)
I spent 4 years at Meteor building one of the most popular open source projects in the world (over
32,000 stars on GitHub). I was the 2nd hire and helped build more or less every part of the open source
Meteor stack, working on front-end frameworks, back-end scaling and build tools. I was "the one

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shipping" most of the projects I was working on. In addition, I was strongly involved in the open source
community around the framework.

Asana
Asana
Mar 2010 - May 2012 (2 years 3 months)
I worked at Asana, founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, building a real-time collaborative
project management suite. At Asana, we developed Luna, the first full stack reactive/realtime JavaScript
framework (Node didn't even exist when Asana started!). I was the 4th hire and worked on many parts
of the stack, both on the framework and on the application.

Developer
ShiftSpace.org
2007 - Mar 2010 (3 years)

Founder and Lead Instructor

The School of Mathematics
2008 - 2010 (2 years)
I founded a space and community for people from all backgrounds to discovery mathematics for
themselves. I created over a dozen lesson plans, inspired by Socratic dialogue. In these classes, a
group would be set out to answer a question that required discovering a mathematical idea they did not
previously know. The instructors would apply minimal guidance, mainly in the form of asking questions.

http://thewe.net/math

Software Engineer
Sep 2006 - Sep 2008 (2 years 1 month)
Developing mobile navigation applications using J2ME. Amongst other things, dealt with major
differences in J2ME implementations between devices and ways to overcome these to create similar
user experiences.

Developer
Israeli Air Force
May 2002 - Feb 2005 (2 years 10 months)
Large-scale project for re-implementation of the IAF tactical computer systems using J2EE and Delphi

Teaching Assistant
Bar-Ilan University
Oct 2001 - Jun 2002 (9 months)
Teaching assistant in the 'Algebraic Structures' course at the Bar-Ilan University. The course consisted
of Group Theory, Ring Theory and Field Theory. Main responsibilities: Frontal presentation and
lectures, preparing and checking home exercises, preparing students for exams.

Software Engineer
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 Cisco
Oct 1999 - May 2002 (2 years 8 months)
Participated in the development of a programmable TCP/IP processor. Worked in two divisions: RT/
Embedded and Java Compiler Developement. Main topics: Networking & TCP/IP, RT/Embedded,
Pattern Matching Algorithms, Compiler Algorithms.

Teaching Assistant
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
2002 - 2002 (less than a year)
Teaching assistant in a Java course in the Techion external studies project. The course consisted
of teaching OOP techniques, Design Patterns, I/O, GUI, Networking, Threads, and more. Main
responsibilities: Frontal presentation and lectures, preparing and checking home exercises and large-
scale projects, preparing students for exam.

Education
Rutgers University
Visiting Student, Mathematics
2007 - 2008
Self-directed year as if I were a PhD student, after which I decided to not pursuing an academic career
in Mathematics.

Bar-Ilan University
M.Sc., Mathematics and Computer Science
2001 - 2003
Graduated before turning 20.

Thesis: On groups with conjugacy classes of distinct sizes (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/

article/pii/S0021869304001863)

Bar-Ilan University
B.Sc., Mathematics, Computer Science
1995 - 2001
Took my first university class, Linear Algebra, at age 11.

Skills
Software Engineering • Web Development • Python • JavaScript • HTML 5 • Software Design •
Software Development • Linux • Git • Machine Learning

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