Stephyn G. W. Butcher, Ph. D.
Department of Computer Science
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD

Academic Experience

Lecturer, Engineering for Professionals, Whiting School of Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Track Coordinator, Engineering for Professionals, Whiting School of Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Curriculum Committee, Master's of Data ScienceEngineering for Professionals, Whiting School of Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Past Experience

Research Associate, NISL, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT

Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, Whiting School of Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Industry Experience

Data Chef (Engineer), PXYData, Washington, DC

Past Experience

Principal Software Engineer, GLG, New York, NY

Data Product Solutions Engineer, Appriss Safety, Louisville, KY

Software Engineer, Cisco/Threat Grid, Sunnyvale, CA

Data Scientist, Clubhouse Software, New York, NY

Data Products Tech Lead, Livingsocial, Washington, DC

Data Scientist, NIH, HPCIO, Silver Spring, MD

Software Engineer/Scientist, Mercury Analytics, Washington, DC

Dissertation: Information Exchange and Conflict Resolution in Particle Swarm Optimization Variants
Advisor: John W. Sheppard

Ph. D. in Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (JHU)
MS in Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (JHU)
MA in Economics, The American University, Washington, DC (AU)
BA in Economics, The California State University, Sacramento, California (CSUS)

 
Teaching
685.648 - Data Science (685.448, 605.448) Summer 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Summer 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Summer 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
605.645 - Artificial Intelligence (605.445) Summer 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Summer 2020, Spring 2020, Fall, 2019, Summer 2019, Spring 2019, Summer 2018, Spring 2018, Summer 2017, Spring 2017, Summer 2016, Spring 2016, Summer 2015, Spring 2015, Summer 2014, Spring 2014, Summer 2013, Spring 2013, Summer 2012, Summer 2011, Summer 2010, Summer 2009
605.745 - Reasoning Under Uncertainty Fall 2011
600.475 - Machine Learning Spring 2009
 
About Me...

I'm very interested in GOFAI (Good Old Fashioned AI) and the rise of Hybrid AI, which seeks to harness the power of both GOFAI and ML in large scale systems. Having spent the better part of two decades as a software engineer (or software engineer adjacent), I am also interested in programming language and software engineering issues. I've been involved data science for many years because of my background in both programming, machine learning, and statistics.

"If you have an idea that is obviously wrong, find a cheap way to test it because if it works, it's interesting. Obviously correct ideas have probably been thought of by someone else" --Kent Beck

 
Interviews Johns Hopkins Magazine, June 2011 issue. Big Question: Are there any "human" endeavors that artificial intelligence won't be able to handle better than we can?
 
Books and Book Chapters...

Ann O. Kay and Stephyn G. W. Butcher, "Employment and Earnings of Performing Artists, 1970-1990" appeared in Artists in the Work Force: Employment and Earnings 1970-1990, Research Report #37 (3.2Mb), Neil O. Alper, Gregory H. Wassall, Joan Jeffri, Roger Greenblatt, Ann O. Kay, Stephyn G.W. Butcher and Harry Hillman Chartrand, authors. National Endowment for the Arts, Seven Locks Press, Santa Ana, California, 1996.

 
Journal Publications...

Stephyn G. W. Butcher and John W. Sheppard, "Distributional Smoothing in Bayesian Fault Diagnosis" IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 58, No. 2, February 2009, pp. 342-349.

John W. Sheppard and Stephyn G. W. Butcher, "A Formal Analysis of Fault Diagnosis with D-Matrices", Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications, 2007.

 
Conference and Other Publications...

Stephyn Butcher, John Sheppard and Brian Haberman, "Comparative Performance and Scaling for Pareto Improving Particle Swarm Optimization", Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, July 2018, forthcoming

Stephyn Butcher, John Sheppard and Shane Strasser, "Information Sharing and Conflict Resolution in Distributed Factored Evolutionary Algorithms", Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, July 2018, forthcoming

Stephyn Butcher, John Sheppard and Shane Strasser, "Pareto Improving Selection of the Global Best in Particle Swarm Optimization", Congress on Evolutionary Computation, July 2018, forthcoming

Shane Strasser, John Sheppard, and Stephyn Butcher, "A Formal Approach to Deriving Factored Evolutionary Algorithm Architectures," submitted to IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, December 2017.

Shane Strasser, Rollie Goodman, John Sheppard, and Stephyn Butcher. "A New Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm." In Proceedings of the 2016 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 53-60. ACM, 2016.

Stephyn Butcher, Shane Strasser, Jenna Hoole, Benjamin Demeo, and John Sheppard. "Relaxing Consensus in Distributed Factored Evolutionary Algorithms." In Proceedings of the 2016 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 5-12. ACM, 2016.

John W. Sheppard, Stephyn G. W. Butcher and Patrick J. Donnelly, "Demonstrating semantic interoperability of diagnostic reasoners via AI-ESTATE", Proceedings of the IEEE: IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, March 2010. p. 1-10.

John W. Sheppard, Stephyn G. W. Butcher and Patrick J. Donnelly, "Standard Diagnostic Services for the ATS framework", IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2009 Conference Record, Baltimore, MD, September 2009. p 393-400.

John W. Sheppard, Stephyn G. W. Butcher, Patrick J. Donnelly, and Benjamin R. Mitchell, "Demonstrating Semantic Interoperability of Diagnostic Models via AI-ESTATE", Proceedings of the IEEE: IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, March 2009.

Stephyn G. W. Butcher and John W. Sheppard, "Asset-Specific Bayesian Diagnostics in Mixed Contexts". IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2007 Conference Record, Baltimore, MD, September 2007.

Stephyn G. W. Butcher and John W. Sheppard, "Improving Diagnostic Accuracy by Blending Probabilities: Some Initial Experiments", Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX-07), Nashville, TN, May 2007

Stephyn G. W. Butcher, John W. Sheppard, Mark A. Kaufman, Hanh Ha, and Craig MacDougall, "Experiments in Bayesian Diagnostics with IUID-Enabled Data,", IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2006 Conference Record, Anaheim, California, September 2006, pp. 605-614

John W. Sheppard and Stephyn G. W. Butcher, "On the Linear Separability of Diagnostic Models,", IEEE AUTOTESTCON 2006 Conference Record, Anaheim, California, September 2006, pp. 626-635.

John W. Sheppard, Stephyn G. W. Butcher, Mark A. Kaufman, and Craig MacDougall, "Not-So-Naive Bayesian Networks and Unique Identification in Developing Advanced Diagnostics," Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 2006.