Siawpeng Er earned his PhD in Bioinformatics from Georgia Tech in 2022. He is now a Lead Data Scientist at the Home Depot. "Siawpeng’s work centers on deep learning and natural language processing. He works with Large Language Models (LLMs) and Small Language Models (SLMs), uses knowledge distillation to make models faster, and combines clickstream data with generative AI to power features like the product badging platform. He builds and deploys on Google Cloud Platform and leverages a suit of generative AI productivity tools—including Claude, Gemini, coding assistants, and agentic workflows—to accelerate the development cycle."