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Shane Conner is a Lead Data Scientist, abstract painter, and technologist based in Grafton, Wisconsin. Professional work: LLM-powered systems, reinforcement learning, end-to-end ML pipelines. Creative work: large-scale squeegee oil paintings.

[email protected]
Location Grafton, WI
Art Commissions Available

Curriculum Vitae

Experience

Lead Data Scientist Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee, WI Aug 2022 – Present
  • Designed and led development of ALAI (Active Listening AI), a multi-component LLM platform processing financial advisor–client call transcripts using LangChain/LangGraph + AWS Bedrock (Claude). Built four production modules: General Summary (Zoom-style), FactFinder (comprehensive case notes with extended thinking), Discovery Letter (client follow-up emails), and Fact Extraction (93.4% field-level recall with Pydantic schema enforcement and ReAct self-correction).
  • Designed ALAI Insights, a multi-agent research framework implementing scientific methodology (questions → hypotheses → investigations → insights → validations → conclusions) with LangGraph orchestration. Features universal voting for community consensus, entity citations for knowledge graphs, cross-run continuity, and progressive context management (200K → 1M token windows).
  • Sole developer of a two-stage financial planning assistant: FT-Transformer for product propensity prediction and FiLM-conditioned transformer for page prediction. Implements plan “inpainting”—predicting optimal plan composition from client features and partial selections—trained on 1.2M+ historical plans with a weighted ensemble approach where product propensities inform page recommendations.
  • Built multi-agent evaluation framework for fact extraction using synthetic SME evaluations; orchestrates specialized agents for field-level accuracy, schema validation, and quality metrics analysis across 14+ dimensions to optimize prompt engineering iterations.
  • Evaluated transcription service alternatives to AWS Transcribe, contributing to migration recommendation that achieved ~60% cost reduction (~$300K annual savings).
Data Scientist Wantable
Milwaukee, WI Jan 2019 – Aug 2022
  • Collaborated on a clothing recommendation system using Doc2Vec embeddings within CatBoost, doubling the take rate for recommended items compared to non-recommended ones.
  • Implemented algorithm reducing warehouse associates’ travel distance for order picking by 24%+.
  • Built a model predicting order items that will receive fulfillment via returns within 24 hours.
  • Created ‘Visual Sales’ dashboard returning a grid of images ordered by best sellers, using Shiny in R.
Data Engineer Penta Technologies
Brookfield, WI Jul 2018 – Jan 2019
  • Worked cross-functionally to extract, transform, and load (ETL) customer data into Penta Technologies ERP database.
Research Analyst Laboratory for Systems Medicine
Chicago, IL Jul 2018 – Jan 2019
  • Constructed predictive models using supervised machine learning algorithms to predict patient mortality risk.
Project Manager Elkay Interior Systems
Milwaukee, WI Mar 2012 – Jul 2018
  • Led a remodel program comprising 348 plumbing supply stores across the US and expedited the timeline by 75%+.

Personal Projects

Quorum: Investment Parallax
Python, PyTorch, Stable-Baselines3, LightGBM
  • Designed and built an autonomous RL-based portfolio management system that ingests multi-source financial data (FRED, SEC, news, market), processes it through 15 specialized feature engineering modules, and outputs risk-managed portfolio allocations using PPO with a Transformer policy network.
  • Implemented cross-asset attention mechanism, market regime detection, and reward shaping balancing return incentives against drawdown and turnover penalties.
  • Integrated as a tool within an LLM-orchestrated agent: the model surfaces insights and allocation recommendations, discusses rationale with a human-in-the-loop, then executes approved actions.
Cadence: Orchestrating Life
Python, SQLite, scikit-learn
  • Built a knowledge graph–based task management system where a single logged action recursively propagates through a multi-parent taxonomy spanning 6 category hierarchies and 1,600+ nodes.
  • Engineered adaptive frequency system using golden ratio–based adjustments: tasks completed early tighten in frequency, tasks completed late loosen — the system evolves to match actual behavior without explicit configuration.
  • Trained prediction model achieving ~75% Hit@1 accuracy for next likely action, served as a tool to an LLM agent that interprets predictions, recommends scheduling changes, and executes adjustments after human-in-the-loop approval.

Skills

LLMs & Generative AI

LangChain / LangGraph Agentic Systems (ReAct) RAG Prompt Engineering LLM Evaluation & Tracing Fine-tuning RLHF AWS Bedrock (Claude)

Machine Learning

Reinforcement Learning (PPO) Transformers NLP (BERT, NER, doc2vec) Computer Vision Classification Regression Clustering Time Series Causal Inference Anomaly Detection

Languages & Frameworks

Python R SQL JavaScript PyTorch TensorFlow Hugging Face scikit-learn Keras Spark

Infrastructure & Deployment

AWS Docker Databricks MLOps A/B Testing CI/CD APIs Git

Data & Visualization

D3.js Plotly Tableau Pandas NumPy

Education

Master of Information and Data Science University of California, Berkeley — School of Information
Berkeley, CA Sept 2016 – May 2018

Summa cum laude

Bachelor of Science, Architectural Studies University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI Sept 2008 – May 2012

Cum Laude · Swimming & Diving Team