Psychology
+ Machine Learning
We are a rapidly growing applied research company
founded by Dr. Galen Buckwalter, a research
psychologist for over 25 years and former
Chief Science Officer at eHarmony.
THROUGH SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF PSYCHOLOGY AND MACHINE LEARNING, WE BUILD MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
psyML Combines Modern Psychology, Advanced Psychometrics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Enabling Unprecedented Understanding of Human Behavior.
Services
We always work with our clients to build customized solutions but our engagements have generally fallen under the following 3 categories.
The typical contract is priced from $100K onwards and spans 3 to 12 months.
Psychometrics
Our team of PhD psychometric experts write assessments tailored specifically to your business. Through iterative testing we explore the collective psychological space of your users, identifying the most significant factors. We then use a proprietary causal model analytic platform to understand how these psychological factors are related to behaviors you care most about, allowing you to engage with your users in a uniquely personal way.
Deliverables: Psychometric questions, survey delivery platform, psychometric dashboards
Deep Learning
psyML owns cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) and image analysis models that are capable of extracting personality, emotions and even beliefs from text and images. Our models have competed in international academic competitions, such as SemEval, and are proven to be top performing. Using techniques such as transfer learning, we can leverage our existing models to fit your custom use cases, even with limited training data.
Deliverables: Models deployed as API for custom integrations, web applications
Data Science
We help you better understand your customers via a two-pronged approach: segmentation and feature augmentation. For segmentation, we perform cluster analyses to uncover interesting user groups and deploy dashboards to help you analyse new custom segments easily. For feature augmentation, we model customer behavior, such as lifetime value and churn, and append psychometric data to help you uncover deep insights.
Deliverables: Hosted live dashboards, interactive reports, customer behavioral models
PROJECTS
Here is a list of projects showcasing our technological capabilities.
Intelligent
Chatbot
Backend
Our advanced NLP system can parse a user’s beliefs around different topics, enabling truly intelligent machine understanding. Our models are extensible to new topics without large amounts of data.
Language
Based
Psychometric
Profiling
From public tweets and social expressions, our scientifically tested models can build psychometric profiles rapidly to provide insights into a user’s personality, emotions and interests.
Psychometric
Based Ad
Targeting
At scale, our production grade web scrapers can append personality and emotional data to millions of Twitter users. Optimize ad campaigns by targeting highly open and receptive audiences or save on ad spend by excluding negative haters.
TEAM
GALEN BUCKWALTER
Dr. Buckwalter has been a research psychologist for over 25 years, starting in academia where he worked primarily on the effects of hormones on cognition during pregnancy and aging at USC. Later, he started a behavioral outcomes research program at Kaiser Permanente and ultimately through a number of serendipitous events, became the creator of the assessment and matching system as the Chief Science Officer for eHarmony. Since then, Galen has worked in both academia and industry, including research at the Institute for Creative Sciences at USC using VR to develop a resilience training program for Marines, and most recently at Payoff, as CSO, a financial services company focused on using psychology to remove debt from their lives. Galen’s talent is bringing people together and attracting wild parrots in his yard.
KAI MILDENBERGER
Kai has been building companies and products since 1991. He has been involved either as founder, CEO, CTO or COO in 15 startups (thus far). He has raised angel funding as well as institutional rounds and experienced exits ranging from mergers, acquisitions to IPO. When not working on a new venture, Kai has been successfully turning around engineering organizations. Kai’s passion is building successful companies, products and sustainable industry-leading teams. He has an intuitive understanding of technology and has spent most of his career taming the ‘bleeding edge.’ His current passion on technology lies in combining 1st order logic with massive amounts of unstructured or semi-structured data.
JINSHU CUI
Jinshu Cui works on psychometrics, data mining, and product development at psyML. She obtained her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Southern California, where she used psychometrics, data science, and game theory to study people’s responses following extreme events. Her work has been published in multiple journals, proceedings, and books, including Risk Analysis and Decision Analysis. Jinshu received her M.S. in Economics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her talent is picking snacks.
IDA JOHNSSON
Ida Johnsson is a research data scientist at psyML. She obtained her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Southern California, where she also received a M.Sc. in Quantitative Economics. Her work focuses on econometric modeling and predictive models for networks and correlated time series. She is also interested in data engineering and loves to build data pipelines. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, cooking and strength training.
ARIANA SHIVES
Ariana Shives is psyML’s Program Manager, she has a background in psychology and a neuroscience degree from USC. A current student in USC’s M.S. Social Entrepreneurship program, Ariana has a passion for making the world a better place. In her spare time, Ariana enjoys competing in triathlons.
SAM LESSING
Sam Lessing designs and analyzes psychometric assessments and creates new mathematical models to streamline the pathway from raw data to readable psychological narratives. In high school Sam completed a mathematics major at Middlebury College, culminating in a thesis on discrete and differential entropy. He then studied at Brown University earning a dual degree in applied math and visual art, winning the Joslin Award for excellence in Art on graduation. Outside of psyML his main interests are sculpture, ceramics, and going to the spa.
DAVID LOKER
David Loker, M.Math., is an award-winning researcher in machine learning with more than 12 years of industry experience. From supply chain optimization at Amazon, to personalization and recommendation systems at Netflix, David has an in-depth, practical understanding of statistical modeling and machine learning techniques. His extensive industry experience includes the formation and management of teams of engineers and data scientists.
DANI HART
Dani Hart is a Clinical Researcher at psyML where she’s following her burning desire to better understand modern-day burnout and how psychometrics, yoga, and diet can help better humanity. With a background in marketing and environmental studies, Dani has led growth efforts at GrowthHackers, managed the marketing automation and direct mail at Payoff, and has helped test new online fundraising strategies with international nonprofits such as Defenders of Wildlife, Greenpeace, WWF and The Wilderness Society.
JARROD STRINGER
Jarrod writes content for psyML. When he’s not writing, he’s lefting, which tells you something of his ambidexterity. Writing at psyML is about exploring different ways of thinking and being, which is a delight and a welcome challenge. Outside of producing high quality, unforgettable content for psyML , Jarrod also enjoys creative writing, kayaking, and hanging out with his wife. His two favorite authors are Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare, and rumor has it, he reads them for fun.