Donald McGillivray
Lead Applied AI Developer
6+
Years Experience
9
Publications
PhD
Chemistry
99%
OCR Accuracy
Skills Summary
Innovative ML Engineer with expertise in LLMs, production systems, and full-stack ML infrastructure
Innovative Machine Learning Engineer with 6+ years of experience designing, developing, and deploying production ML systems that deliver measurable business impact. Expert in LLM fine-tuning, model evaluation, and streaming feature pipelines.
Core Technical
Specialized
Work Experience
Lead Applied AI Researcher at Goodlabs Studio • Doctoral Researcher at UWaterloo
Lead Applied AI Researcher and Developer
- Engineering agentic platform automating real-time data solutions with Kafka Streams
- Led LLM-powered applications from ideation to production with synthetic data generation
- Built OCR/KIE pipeline achieving 99% accuracy using Faster-RCNN and multimodal models
- Implemented comprehensive model evaluation frameworks for continuous monitoring
- Engineered streaming pipelines for real-time speech recognition with Kafka and Flink
- Developed NLP models (BERT, FLAN-T5) for medical information extraction (92.7% accuracy)
- Applied quantum computing to optimize RTGS systems, increasing liquidity usage by 10%
Doctoral Researcher/Technician
- Led research on conducting polymers for optoelectronic applications
- Maintained multi-million-dollar scientific instruments
- Developed computational models for polymer/semiconductor junctions
- Published six peer-reviewed papers and presented at international conferences
Education
PhD Chemistry • MSc Material Science • BSc Physics • Big Data Architecture
PhD Chemistry
Thesis: Enhanced Conducting Polymer PEDOT:PSS/Silicon Photo Sensors: Optimisation of Thin-Film Properties and Heterojunction Interactions
Masters in Science: Material Science
Thesis: Synthesis and Characterization of Nanostructured Catalyst for Photovoltaic Applications
Bachelor of Science: Physics, minor Math
Thesis: Synthesis and Functionalization of Carbon Nanotubes for Purpose of Application in a Photovoltaic Device
College Graduate Certificate: Big Data Solutions Architecture
Technical Proficiencies
Python, PyTorch, Cloud Platforms, ML Frameworks, NLP & Computer Vision
Languages & Tools
ML & AI Frameworks
Specializations
Data & Cloud
Publications
9 peer-reviewed papers in ML, quantum computing, and materials science
-
Improving the Efficiency of Payments Systems Using Quantum Computing.
C. McMahon, D. McGillivray, A. Desai, F. Rivadeneyra, J.-P. Lam, T. Lo, D. Marsden, V. Skavysh. Management Science (2024), DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.4336 -
Leveraging Mobile NER for Real-time Capture of Symptoms, Diagnoses, and Treatments from Clinical Dialogues.
R. Rhouma, C. McMahon, D. McGillivray, H. Massood, S. Kanwal, K. Meraj, T. Lo, J.-P. Lam, C. Smith. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (2024), DOI: 10.1016/j.imu.2024.101519 -
Highly Conducting Hybrid Silver Nanowire-Embedded PEDOT:PSS for High-Efficiency Planar-Silicon/Organic Heterojunction Solar Cells.
J.P. Thomas, Md. A. Rahman, S. Srivastava, J.S. Kang, D. McGillivray, M. AbdEllah, N.F. Heinig, K.T. Leung. ACS Nano 12 (2018) 9495-9503, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b04848 -
Performance Enhancement by Secondary Doping in PEDOT:PSS/Planar-Si Hybrid Solar Cells.
D. McGillivray, J. Thomas, M. Abdellah, N. Heinig, K.T. Leung. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 8 (2016) 34303-34308, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b09704 -
Defect-Rich Dopant-Free ZrO2 Nanostructures with Superior Dilute Ferromagnetic Semiconductor Properties.
A. Rahman, S. Rout, T. Thomas, D. McGillivray, K.T. Leung. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 138 (2016) 11896-11906, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b06949 -
Plasmonic gold nanoparticles for ZnO-nanotube photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cell application.
M. Abdellah, N. Moghimi, L. Zhang, J. Thomas, D. McGillivray, S. Srivastava, K.T. Leung. Nanoscale 8 (2016) 1658-1664, DOI: 10.1039/C5NR08029K -
Reversible structural transformation and enhanced performance of PEDOT:PSS-based hybrid solar cells driven by light intensity.
J. Thomas, S. Srivastava, L. Zhao, M. Abd-Ellah, D. McGillivray, J. Kang, A. Rahman, N. Moghimi, N. Heinig, K.T. Leung. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 7 (2015) 7466-7470, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b01252 -
High-efficiency hybrid solar cells by nanostructural modification in PEDOT:PSS with co-solvent addition.
J. Thomas, L. Zhao, D. McGillivray, K.T. Leung. Journal of Materials Chemistry A 2 (2014) 2383-2389, DOI: 10.1039/C3TA14590E -
Developing empirical heat-transfer correlations for supercritical CO2 flowing in vertical bare tubes.
S. Gupta, E. Saltanov, S.J. Mokry, I. Pioro, L. Trevani, D. McGillivray. Nuclear Engineering and Design 261 (2013) 116-131, DOI: 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2013.02.048
Leadership & Service
Teaching, volunteer work, and industry contributions
Teaching Experience
- Physical Chemistry tutorials (2017-2018) - University of Waterloo
- Computational Chemistry and molecular simulations (2013-2018) - University of Waterloo
- Physics I and II tutorials (2011-2013) - Ontario Tech University
Volunteer & Leadership
- GCAT Board of Directors (2025-Present) - Guelph Coalition of Active Transportation
- NACHA Quantum Working Group (2023-Present) - Educational materials for quantum computing in payments
- Immigration Services Guelph Wellington (2020-2024) - English conversation circles for newcomers