William Kearns
Chief Science & Technology Officer at University of Washington
Greater Seattle Area United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolWilliam Kearns is a Head of Engineering who combines 11+ years of product-focused AI and behavioral science experience with deep technical leadership, currently owning the AI engine behind a personalized coaching platform used by 50,000+ users. He has led teams that translate research into award-winning products—most notably Headspace’s Ebb—and holds a PhD in Biomedical Informatics for work on empathetic therapy via augmented reasoning that produced a dozen+ peer-reviewed papers. A four-time founder with two patents in conversational AI, William designs architectures that scale (including back-end contributions to the popular Rasa open-source framework) and builds cross-functional teams that ship mission-driven systems. He moves fluidly between product strategy, system architecture, and team development, preferring to lead through technical depth and measurable behavioral impact. Based in Seattle, he also advises startups and teaches as affiliate faculty, blending applied research, entrepreneurship, and hands-on engineering.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Computational Linguistics, Computational Linguistics at University of WashingtonDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Biomedical and Health Informatics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Biomedical and Health Informatics at University of Washington - School of MedicineBachelor's Degree, Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies, Bachelor's Degree, Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies at University of Central Florida
Stackoverflow
78reputation
7kreached
1answer
1question
Github Skills (13)
amazon-dynamodb10
boto10
dynamodb10
rasa10
back-end-development10
python10
natural-language-processing9
conversational-ai9
machine-learning9
recursion6
rasa-core6
rasa-nlu6
numpy6
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
RasaHQ/rasa
Sep 2019 - Aug 2021
💬 Open source machine learning framework to automate text- and voice-based conversations: NLU, dialogue management, connect to Slack, Facebook, and more - Create chatbots and voice assistants
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 reviews, 54 commits, 8 PRs in 1 year 11 months
Contributions summary:William contributed to the development of the Rasa framework by implementing a DynamoDB tracker store. They added new functionality to persist conversation history using DynamoDB, including the necessary classes and methods for saving and retrieving tracker data. Additionally, they addressed a bug related to conversation serialization within the framework. They also modified test files to test the new feature.
machine-learningnluslackvoice-assistantnlp
kearnsw/cora
Mar 2020 - Sep 2020
Contributions:42 commits, 1 push in 5 months
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