Cloudera Fast Forward Labs is a machine intelligence research and advisory group within Cloudera. We routinely publish comprehensive reports that focus on a wide variety of machine learning capabilities. This blog focuses on question answering, a natural language processing and understanding (NLP/U) task that has recently begun to show signs of maturity, and documents our approach to implementing this model in a general setting, but with corporate use cases in mind. This project is led by two of CFF’s Research Engineers.

Melanie R. Beck, Ph.D.

Melanie is a Research Engineer at Cloudera Fast Forward Labs where she delights in translating machine learning breakthroughs into practical applications, and is particularly interested in natural language processing capabilities. With experience in machine learning and data science at diverse organizations - from manufacturing to cybersecurity - she is a jack-of-all-trades problem solver as well as a reformed astrophysicist, holding a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota.

Andrew Reed

Andrew is a Data Scientist at Cloudera Fast Forward Labs where he spends his time implementing machine learning solutions for enterprise clients, researching the latest advances in the field of machine intelligence, and building prototypes applied to real-world use cases. Prior to joining Cloudera, Andrew worked as a Data Scientist in Deloitte’s Analytics & Cognitive practice developing data products and delivering insights for Government and Public Sector organizations. Andrew holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech.