Søren Welling is a pragmatic data scientist and software engineer with a decade of experience building production-ready ML and data systems across biotech, logistics, insurance, and utilities. He translated the high-performance Rust Polars dataframe library into R as the r-polars author and contributes to core Polars functionality, improving statistical and string operations in a widely used open-source project. As founder of Pharmatronics and co-founder of DATAMAGA, he has led real-world deployments from real-time parking and trailer ETA systems to predictive maintenance and personalized advertising for millions of users. His background includes a PhD/postdoc blend of machine learning in drug development and biotech sensor data, and he created tools like the forestFloor package to interpret black-box models. Søren combines hands-on backend development with systems architecture and teaching—he runs workshops on building health devices and embedded ML—bringing both implementation depth and a flair for communicating complex ideas. Based in Copenhagen, he blends enterprise-grade engineering with academic rigor and a curious eye for unexpected data (he also claims to host videos of slow-moving dust particles).
Extremely fast Query Engine for DataFrames, written in Rust
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:7 reviews, 5 commits, 12 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Søren contributed to the Polars dataframes library by fixing bugs related to operator mapping, skew and kurtosis calculations, and the `str.contains` and `str.parse_int` functions. They also implemented features like wildcard support for `pl.min` and `pl.max`, and addressed issues in the join builder. Their work primarily focused on enhancing the functionality and correctness of core data manipulation features within the Rust and Python APIs.
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