Practical Magic

Paul is passionate about the future of retail and creating new shopping experiences. In his current role he is helping retailers provide quick delivery services to customers in a scalable way. In the past he was instrumental in the creation and success of Tesco Labs and built and launched advanced grocery voice shopping experiences on Alexa.

Dr. Athanasios (Thanos) Vlontzos, Research Scientist at Spotify and visiting researcher at Imperial College London, has extensive experience in academic and industrial research, including affiliations with GE Healthcare, NASA Frontier Development Lab, Zeit Medical, and Apple.

His expertise lies in causal reasoning and machine learning, focusing on developing high-quality AI solutions with appropriate safeguards. With over 29 papers in impactful conferences and journals, his recent work is featured in academic (Nature Machine Intelligence) and popular science journals (MIT Tech review), and recognized by notable figures like Bill Gates and Turing Award recipient Judea Pearl.

Completed my PhD in Machine Learning in London. After that, I joined AIG Investments AI team as a machine learning scientist, where I had the privilege of collaborating with a diverse team of data engineers, business analysts, and domain experts. Together, we embarked on a mission to optimise the investment process by designing and implementing innovative AI models. Finally, I joined the fintech team at Booking.com. I work in developing cutting-edge ML products that play a pivotal role in determining the best payments or fintech solutions to offer to Booking.com customers. Working in a live and online environment on the platform has presented exciting challenges and opportunities to continuously enhance the customer experience through personalised and data-driven recommendations.