Veronika Margaret Megler (born 14 October 1960) is an Australian computer scientist. , Megler is a principal data scientist at

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

and is known as the co-developer of ''

The Hobbit ''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ...

'', a 1982 text adventure game adapted from the novel by

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...

Education

Megler was born in 1960, and educated in Melbourne at Mac.Robertson Girls' High School, where she was school valedictorian in science. She began studying science at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, intending to major in statistics but switching to a computer science major which she found more enjoyable.

Beam Software

Megler became the first employee at video game development studio Beam Software/Melbourne House as a programmer. She recruited Philip Mitchell and the two began working on an illustrated

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

game based on ''

'' by

, with Megler concentrating on the game's physics system and a measure of autonomy for non-player characters. This game was structured to be used as the basis for other games as an early adaptable game engine. The game was released in 1982 in the UK and Australia. Megler and Mitchell also developed another Beam game, '' Penetrator'', also released in 1982.

Computer science career

Prior to her graduation from the University of Melbourne, Megler resigned from Beam to concentrate on her studies, and Mitchell remained to complete the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

version. Megler worked at

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as an information technology architect, operating system expert and consultant. In 2009, she left IBM to study for a master's degree and PhD in computer science for scientific big data at

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon, United States. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the next ...

. , Megler lives in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

and is a principal data scientist at

. In her interview in ''MLinProduction'' in 2020 as part of a series with creators of top machine learning resources, she explains that this recent work focuses on managing larger and higher-impact machine learning projects.

Publications and journal articles

* Megler, V.M., Maier, D. (2011). ''Finding Haystacks with Needles: Ranked Search for Data Using Geospatial and Temporal Characteristics''. In: Bayard Cushing, J., French, J., Bowers, S. (eds) Scientific and Statistical Database Management. SSDBM 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6809. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. * V. M. Megler and D. Maier, "Data Near Here: Bringing Relevant Data Closer to Scientists," in ''Computing in Science & Engineering'', vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 44–53, May–June 2013. * Veronika Megler, David Banis, Heejun Chang, ''Spatial analysis of graffiti in San Francisco'', Applied Geography, Volume 54, 2014, p 63-73, ISSN 0143-6228.

References

External links

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Google Scholar listing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Megler, Veronika 1960 births Living people Women data scientists Data scientists Australian video game designers University of Melbourne alumni Portland State University alumni Scientists from Melbourne People educated at Mac.Robertson Girls' High School Australian expatriates in the United States Australian women computer scientists