The I in IRIS - Tom P
Meet Tom Perkins, our machine learning researcher with a serious passion for audio. Find out how his IRIS journey has developed
Meet Tom Perkins, our self confessed nerd and Machine Learning Researcher with a serious passion for audio. Find out how his IRIS journey has developed as he celebrates one year at the company and reveals his secret past life…
Congrats on celebrating your first year at IRIS! Can you tell us what your day-to-day is like? Has it changed a lot since you started?
It’s been a brilliant year. My current day-to-day involves a lot of in-depth discussions in the IRIS HQ research room (officially denominated as the “nerd cage”) about the latest audio machine learning research, improving our pipelines and systems, and collaborating with everyone on the team on various challenges.
Being in a room with incredibly intelligent people (i.e. nerds) who share a passion for audio, AI and writing great code is incredibly motivating, and also a fantastic sounding board whenever one of us is dealing with a tricky problem. The other half of the job is individual research, which feels like wizardry when you get results quickly, yet most of the time the real magic results from many iterations of tackling small problems.
The day-to-day has changed quite a bit since I joined, mainly because we’ve grown as a research team, and had a massive drive to refine our systems and processes. We’re in a fantastic position to develop powerful models, building on the current power of Clarity and extending its capabilities, and there’s always new avenues to explore to stay on the cutting edge of audio AI.
What are 1-2 of the standout projects you’ve worked on, and why?
Our partnership with Indycar was a big highlight of the first half of this year. I’m super proud to have helped in the process of delivering our Clarity magic to enhance Indycar driver and crew audio, broadcasted in real time to millions of viewers. It’s a pretty stunning example of how robust and versatile our tech is - massive shout out to the dream team Will and Pat on delivering it.
More recently, there’s a super-secret project I’ve been working on which could open up a whole new dimension for Clarity. I’m not yet allowed to tell you all the details, but I can say that everyone in the nerd cage is super excited about this one.
As many IRISians, you’re a huge audiophile. Are there any audio projects you’ve been working on lately that you can share with us?
If this counts, on the weekends I’ve been collaborating with friends creating and recording music - we’ve made a couple tunes as a collective this summer, but have yet to share them with the wider world. As part of this I’m assembling a very DIY home studio setup in a corner of my flat, which I can rationalise by considering it also comes in handy for my job when working from home.
Some quickfire questions:
App you couldn’t live without?
YouTube - how did people ever survive/cook/clean the house before you could put on a 30-minute video essay about the sound design and art direction of an obscure 90s film you’re never going to watch?
Favourite holiday destination?
New York - it’s basically London on steroids. Also, other parts of London, when the weather is nice (which is rare enough to feel like a holiday).
Favourite thing to do in London?
Cycle about and explore the endless supply of neighbourhoods contained within this city. See the image above of me mapping the exotic far reaches of Hackney marshes.
Biggest pet peeve?
This question. That’s the pet peeve. I have no good answer for this.
Something your colleagues don’t know about you?
My brief musical theatre stint on the Paris equivalent of Broadway, in a past life.
