T O M M C K E N Z I E

Hello. I am a developer, designer, & data scientist. Former chemistry research scientist.

I have practical experience working in machine learning, computer vision, data visualisation, and as a research scientist; I think a lot about human-centered design in the domain of data-driven problem solving.

When offline you will probably find me trying to train Momo ๐Ÿฉ or pining for expensive jazz records.

tmckenzie.nz at gmail dot com ๐Ÿ“ 

Blog

A collection of write ups on topics or projects I have pursured.

Part 2: Building a Bob Dylan Lyrics Generator

Dec 11th, 2020

Using our pre-trained and fine-tuned language models that can generate lyrics in the style of Leonard or Bob, we'll built out a simple frontend web app. Things I'll be using (and learning) include Google Cloud services like Cloud Functions and Cloud Run, as well as frontend staples like React.

Part 1: Building a Bob Dylan Lyrics Generator

Sept 15th, 2020

How to build a lyrics generator in the style of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and a Leonard-Bob hydrid! In this first of two parts I go through how to prepare the data and fine-tune a language model so that it is ready to start generating some (almost incomprehensible - exactly as Bob would prefer!) lyrics.

Styling Charts in Seaborn

June 2nd, 2020

Why are defaults for chart styles always so boring? Some might even argue in many progams they are actively harmful to gaining insight. Here are some tricks for communicating between matplotlib and seaborn for making your charts look elegant, clean, and informative.

Part 2: Reshaping data through aggregation (3 ways)

Nov 22nd, 2019

Creating a table of summary statistics? Getting some year-on-year financial data? In this post we'll arm you with all the tools you need to reshape your data into aggregated or condensed forms through the powerful groupby and aggregate methods provided in pandas. Both numerical and categorical (string) column examples are shown.

Part 1: Reshaping data with Pandas

Aug 10th, 2019

Wide-to-long. Long-to-wide. Tidy. Normalized. Messy! Data comes in lots of shapes and sizes. Fortunately the Python library Pandas has a wide and flexible range of tools to help us massage data into not just the shape we want, but the shape we need. This post will look at some key dataframe methods for converting the shape of your data to suit your need.

Visualising shooting streaks in the NBA

May 15th, 2019

Calculating shooting streaks for the key 3-pt shooters going into the GSW-POR Western Conference Finals. Using some tricks in Pandas we can get the number of consecutive makes or misses and visualise them with emojis - fun!

Projects

Some (mostly pointless) apps I've built.

Game of the Day

A top secret algorithm ๐Ÿ”ฎ for recommending which NBA games to watch (without spoiling the score!)

LINK

Papers

If polymer chemistry is more your thing.
(my personal favourites ๐ŸŒŸ)


2020
Bacterial Redox Potential Powers Controlled Radical Polymerization ๐ŸŒŸ
Mitchell D. Nothling, Hanwei Cao, Thomas G. McKenzie, Dianna M. Hocking, Richard A. Strugnell*, and Greg G. Qiao*
Journal of the American Chemical Society (2020)

2019
Ultrasound and sonochemistry for radical polymerization: Sound synthesis
Thomas G. McKenzie, Fatemeh Karimi, Muthupandian Ashokkumar, and Greg G. Qiao*
Chemistryโ€“A European Journal (2019)
Self-deoxygenating glassware
Mitchell D. Nothling, Thomas G. McKenzie, Isaac A. Eastland, Hao-Che Chien, Joe Collins, Anne S. Meyer, Greg G. Qiao*
Chemical Communications (2019)
Synthesis of ultra-high molecular weight polymers by controlled production of initiating radicals
Amin Reyhani, Stephanie Allison-Logan, Hadi Ranji-Burachaloo, Thomas G. McKenzie, Gary Bryant, and Greg G. Qiao*
Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer Chemistry (2019)
Highly Living Stars via Core-First Photo-RAFT Polymerization: Exploitation for Ultra-High Molecular Weight Star Synthesis
Stephanie Allison-Logan, Fatemeh Karimi, Yongkang Sun, Thomas G. McKenzie, Mitchell D. Nothling, Gary Bryant, and Greg G. Qiao*
ACS Macro Letters (2019)

2018
Blood-Catalyzed RAFT Polymerization ๐ŸŒŸ
Amin Reyhani, Mitchell D. Nothling, Hadi Ranji-Burachaloo, Thomas G. McKenzie, Qiang Fu, Shereen Tan, Gary Bryant, and Greg G. Qiao*
Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2018)
Hydroxyl Radical Activated RAFT Polymerization
Thomas G. McKenzie, Amin Reyhani, Mitchell D. Nothling, and Greg G. Qiao*
Reversible Deactivation Radical Polymerization: Mechanisms and Synthetic Methodologies, Chapter 14, pp 307-321, ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 1284
Controlled RAFT polymerization facilitated by a nanostructured enzyme mimic
Qiang Fu, Hadi Ranji-Burachaloo, Min Liu, Thomas G. McKenzie, Shereen Tan, Amin Reyhani, Mitchell D. Nothling, Dave E. Dunstan, and Greg G. Qiao*
Polymer Chemistry (2018)

2017
Sono-RAFT polymerization in aqueous medium ๐ŸŒŸ
Thomas G McKenzie, Enrico Colombo, Qiang Fu, Muthupandian Ashokkumar, and Greg G. Qiao*
Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2017)
Development of a robust PET-RAFT polymerization using graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4)
Qiang Fu, Qiushi Ruan, Thomas G. McKenzie, Amin Reyhani, Junwang Tang, and Greg G. Qiao*
Macromolecules (2017)
Diverse approaches to star polymers via cationic and radical RAFT cross-linking reactions using mechanistic transformation
Mineto Uchiyama, Kotaro Satoh, Thomas G. McKenzie, Qiang Fu, Greg G. Qiao*, and Masami Kamigaito
Polymer Chemistry (2017)

2016
Beyond traditional RAFT: alternative activation of thiocarbonylthio compounds for controlled polymerization
Thomas G. McKenzie, Qiang Fu, Mineto Uchiyama, Kotaro Satoh, Jiangtao Xu, Cyrille Boyer, Masami Kamigaito, and Greg G. Qiao*
Advanced Science (2016)
Investigation into the photolytic stability of RAFT agents and the implications for photopolymerization reactions
Thomas G. McKenzie, Laura Pieres da Mata Costa, Qiang Fu, Dave E. Dunstan, Greg G. Qiao*
Polymer Chemistry (2016)
Star polymers
Jing M. Ren, Thomas G. McKenzie, Qiang Fu, Edgar H.H. Wong, Jiangtao Xu, Zesheng An, Sivaprakash Shanmugam, Thomas P. Davis, Cyrille Boyer, and Greg G. Qiao*
Chemical reviews (2016)

2015
Visible light mediated controlled radical polymerization in the absence of exogenous radical sources or catalysts ๐ŸŒŸ
Thomas G. McKenzie, Qiang Fu, Edgar H.H. Wong, Dave E. Dunstan, and Greg G. Qiao*
Macromolecules (2015)
Controlled formation of star polymer nanoparticles via visible light photopolymerization
Thomas G. McKenzie, Edgar H.H. Wong, Qiang Fu, Adrian Sulistio, Dave E. Dunstan, and Greg G. Qiao*
ACS Macro Letters (2015)
Tertiary amine catalyzed photo-induced controlled radical polymerization of methacrylates
Qiang Fu, Thomas G. McKenzie, Shereen Tan, Eunhyung Nam, and Greg G. Qiao*
Polymer Chemistry (2015)