Mars Buttfield-Addison, also known as @TheMartianLife, is a Software Engineer and Data Scientist from way down South in sunny Hobart, Tasmania. She is currently working towards her PhD in Computer Engineering at the University of Tasmania, collaborating with CSIRO's Data61 to investigate the ways machine learning methods can improve our ability to reliably and accurately identify and track objects in orbit using existing radio astronomy resources--particularly small fragment space debris.

Astronomy was not her background; instead, her expertise lies in designing AI-powered solutions for complex domains across industry and academia. In addition to this day job, Mars is also:

• a frequent volunteer and tech speaker at industry events all over the world;
• a teaching and research assistant at UTAS;
• a freelance software developer and author of educational materials—including Practical AI with Swift for O'Reilly Media (as Mars Geldard), and related books still in the works;
• a conference organiser of /dev/world and EveryWorld;
• an industry council member (AUC National, prev. ACS Tasmania) and community advocate in the field of Swift and Apple platform development; and
• a member of the WesterosCraft project team that is slowly recreating the entire world of Game of Thrones in Minecraft...

...among many other side hustles.

• linux.conf.au 2021 (Speaker)
• InfoShare 2020 (Speaker)
• PAX Australia 2020 (Panellist)
• National Science Week 2020 (Panellist, credited as company name "Secret Lab")
• Software Architecture Conference New York 2020 (Speaker)
• The Swift Alps 2019 (Mentor)
• Software Architecture Conference Berlin 2019 (Speaker and Workshop Presenter)
• TensorFlow World 2019 (Speaker)
• Artificial Intelligence Conference San Jose 2019 (Speaker)
• NZGDC 2019 (Speaker)
• AWS Community Day 2019 (Speaker)
• PyCon Australia 2019 (Speaker)
• O'Reilly Open Source Conference Portland 2019 (Workshop Presenter)
• Strata Data Conference London 2019 (Speaker)
• Artificial Intelligence Conference New York 2019 (Speaker)
• Reinforce AI Conference Budapest 2019 (Speaker)
• Software Architecture Conference New York 2019 (Speaker)
• CreateWorld Conference 2018 (Speaker)
• Artificial Intelligence Conference San Francisco 2018 (Speaker)
• /dev/world Developer Conference 2018 (Speaker)
• O'Reilly Open Source Conference Portland 2018 (Speaker)

PhD Candidature

• Awarded a CSIRO Data61 Collaboration Scholarship for her PhD project in Space Situational Awareness, formalising collaboration with CSIRO Data61 and CASS
• Married the love of her life during a global pandemic, while moving house (2020)
• Created and commenced PhD on machine learning applications for orbital object tracking and debris mitigation (2020)
• Signed on with O'Reilly Media to write Practical Simulations for Machine Learning (2020, for release in late 2021/early 2022)

Honours Year

• Became the first Data Science Intern at one of Australia's largest tech startups, Canva, as part of their highly competitive Engineering Internships program
• Completed Honours degree with First Class Honours and a perfect GPA, was awarded a University Medal for her thesis, and was admitted to the Dean's Honour Roll again (2019)
• Named ICT Student of the Year in the ACS Digital Disruptor Awards (2019)
• Invited to be a reviewer and praise quote provider for Erica Sadun's Swift Style, second edition (2019)
• Awarded The University Club Tasmania Honours Scholarship (2019)
• Nominated to national Executive Council for the AUC (2019)

Undergraduate

• Completed undergraduate degree with a perfect GPA, was admitted to the Dean's Honour Roll (2018)
• Employed as a research assistant/developer on key machine learning project for public safety under the University of Tasmania's Data, Knowledge and Decisions research theme (2018)
• Signed on with O'Reilly Media to write Practical Artificial Intelligence with Swift (2018, released 2019)
• Awarded WWDC Scholarship for the submission ProTeGen, a Swift Playground Book that teaches simple procedural terrain generation (2018)
• Awarded AUC Travel Support Scholarship for WWDC Attendance (2018)
• Worked on final-year university software project with Savage, the creators of multi-award winning app Procreate (2018)
• Employed as a tutor of first-year University of Tasmania Artificial Intelligence course, later also Introduction to Data Science (2018)
• Nominated to state Branch Executive Committee for the ACS in Tasmania (2018)
• Awarded the M.J. Rees Prize for First Year Information Systems Academic Award (2017)
• Awarded GovHack prizes for Best Use of Tasmanian Historical Data, Best Data Visualisation, Excellence in Visual Design and the Digital Learning Hack Award (2017)
• Invited to, and joined, the Golden Key International Honour Society (2017)
• Lost almost 60kg once (2016-)