Team update

# Team update Source: [https://openai.com/index/team-update-august/](https://openai.com/index/team-update-august/) We’ve hired more great people to help us achieve our goals\. Welcome, everyone\! We’ve[hired⁠](https://openai.com/careers/)more great people to help us achieve our[goals⁠](https://openai.com/index/openai-technical-goals/)\. Welcome, everyone\! - **Dario Amodei**\.[Dario⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dario-amodei-3934934)was one of the lead authors of[Deep Speech 2⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02595), a speech system which achieved near\-human performance on many speech tasks\. He is also a main co\-author of “[Concrete Problems in AI Safety⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.06565)”, which highlights issues related to accidents in machine learning systems\. Prior to OpenAI, he worked at Google Brain\. - **Filip Wolski**\.[Filip’s⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/filip-wolski-a7273728)recent background is in “practical” modeling, having spent the last few years working in the high\-frequency trading space\. In the past he enjoyed problem\-solving in programming competitions, and won the[IOI⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/768)and[ACM ICPC⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://icpc.baylor.edu/community/history-icpc-2007)\. - **Jack Clark**\.[Jack⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://twitter.com/jackclarksf)has spent the past few years writing about artificial intelligence and distributed systems, most recently at Bloomberg and BusinessWeek\. His articles have covered technologies like[memory networks⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-09/the-future-of-computers-is-the-mind-of-a-toddler),[image generation⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-02/computers-learn-how-to-paint-whatever-you-tell-them-to), and[reinforcement learning for robots⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-preschool-for-robots/), and issues like[diversity within AI⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-23/artificial-intelligence-has-a-sea-of-dudes-problem)\. As our Strategy and Communications Director, he will help with community outreach, policy, communications, and strategy\. - **Scott Gray**\.[Scott⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://twitter.com/scottgray76)was previously an engineer at[Nervana Systems⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://www.nervanasys.com/author/scott-g/)where he focused on optimizing the performance of deep networks on GPUs\. His[assembly\-level optimizations⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.09308)for dense linear algebra and convolution remain the fastest available\. When not[writing software⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/scott-gray)he’s usually spending his time reading up on the latest research in neuroscience and related fields\. - **Zain Shah**\.[Zain⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://twitter.com/zan2434)previously led deep learning efforts to build a collaborative human\-machine intelligence system at[Clara Labs⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://claralabs.com/)\. He’s also worked on[speech synthesis⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://cepstral.com/)and[computational neuroscience⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://cnbc.cmu.edu/), built[Mosaic⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://mosaic.io/), and founded a mobile behavioral analytics[company⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://watchsend.com/)\. He most recently built a[GIF search engine⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://deepgif.tarzain.com/)using deep multimodal embeddings\. We’re also pumped to be working with the following people for a more limited period of time: - **Catherine Olsson**\.[Catherine⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineolsson)built OpenAI Gym’s[REST API⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/openai/gym-http-api), which has already attracted users in[Lua⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/openai/gym-http-api/tree/master/binding-lua),[C\+\+⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/openai/gym-http-api/tree/master/binding-cpp),[Java⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/gym-java-client), and[Rust⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/openai/gym-http-api/tree/master/binding-rust)\. She graduated with a perfect GPA in CS and Brain & Cognitive Science from MIT, and has extensive research experience in[computational neuroscience⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://f1000research.com/posters/1098032)and[psychology⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=TvdMDhwAAAAJ&citation_for_view=TvdMDhwAAAAJ:2osOgNQ5qMEC)\. Catherine has taught[programming and applied math⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~eero/math-tools14/)for six years, including outreach to women and underrepresented minorities\. - **Harri Edwards**\.[Harri⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/harri-edwards)is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, where he is researching models that can quickly adapt to new situations by[learning to represent datasets⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.02185)\. - **Igor Mordatch**\.[Igor⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~igor.mordatch/)is interested in optimal control, machine learning, and their applications to robotics, biomechanics, and neuroscience\. His PhD was in automated discovery and learning of complex movement[behaviors⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhr_jtQrhVA)\. He will join the faculty at[CMU⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.cmu.edu/)in September 2017\. - **Taco Cohen**\.[Taco⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://ta.co.nl/)is a PhD student working on applied and theoretical problems in representation learning\. Most recently he invented group equivariant convolutional neural networks \([G\-CNNs⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://jmlr.org/proceedings/papers/v48/cohenc16.pdf)\), a generalization of CNNs that improves the statistical efficiency of these models by exploiting symmetries\. - **Tambet Matiisen**\.[Tambet⁠\(opens in a new window\)](https://github.com/tambetm/)is a PhD student from University of Tartu, Estonia\. He previously worked as a software engineer and founded his own[startup⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://www.korteriyhistu.net/)\. His recent projects range from[making deep reinforcement learning agents cooperate⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.08779)to predicting a rat’s location from its brain activity\. He also wrote an[accessible introduction to deep Q\-learning⁠\(opens in a new window\)](http://neuro.cs.ut.ee/demystifying-deep-reinforcement-learning/)\.