Practical NLP with LLMs: From Messy Text to Value

Doug Turnbull is an expert in search technology and relevance engineering, currently serving as Principal Engineer at Daydream, where he builds hybrid search systems combining lexical and vector retrieval, and develops LLM-driven quality programs for e-commerce search.

Previously, he led machine-learning-driven search initiatives at Reddit, significantly improving search relevance through Learning to Rank methods. Doug also advanced e-commerce search at Shopify and served as CTO at OpenSource Connections.

He co-authored the influential book Relevant Search (Manning, 2016) and created popular open-source tools, including Quepid and the Elasticsearch Learning to Rank plugin. He regularly speaks at industry conferences, making search relevance accessible to engineers.

Founder of DataTalks.Club · Creator of the Zoomcamp Series · ML Engineer & Author

Alexey Grigorev is the founder of DataTalks.Club and the creator of the popular Zoomcamp series. With 15 years of experience in software engineering and over 12 years in machine learning, he has built and deployed large-scale ML systems at companies like OLX Group and Simplaex.

An advocate for practical, hands-on education, Alexey has taught over 100,000 students, focusing on a code-first approach to help learners build real-world skills.

In the past, he was an active participant in data science competitions. A Kaggle Master, Alexey has achieved top rankings in several challenges, including 1st place in the NIPS'17 Criteo Challenge and 2nd place in the WSDM Cup 2017: Vandalism Detection.

He is also the author of