Work

• Airbnb (2023–) AI Experience.
• GamePlanner.AI (2022–2023) AI-powered decision making.
• Beautiful.ai (2019–2022) Design-forward, detail-oriented presentation software.
• Inkwell (2016–2019) Web-based scientific and technical documents.
• BitFactory (2006–2007) User-mode virtualization for packaging .NET apps.

Projects

• elm-graphql Compiles type safe GraphQL queries to Elm.
• apache/pdfbox Apache PDFBox library (Java). I’m a PMC member and contributor.
• confsolve Configuration solver for datacenter problems (OCaml, my PhD project).
• big-xml node.js module for reading large (1 GB+) XML files.
• byline node.js module for parsing streams line-by-line (2m+ downloads per week).

Education

• PhD Informatics
  • University of Edinburgh, 2013
  • Research Institute: Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications (CISA)
  • Thesis: “Constraint-Based Specifications for System Configuration”
  • Advisors: Paul Anderson and Andy Gordon
  • Awards: Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship (2009)
• MSc Bioinformatics
  • University of Manchester, 2009
  • Dissertation: “Identification of New Drug-Disease Associations via Metabolic Drug Scopes”
• BEng Software Engineering
  • University of Manchester, 2006
  • Dissertation: “A Linker for the .NET Framework”

Academic Publications

PhD Thesis

• Constraint-Based Specifications for System Configuration
  • John A. Hewson, The University of Edinburgh, 2013

Papers

• Constraint-Based Autonomic Reconfiguration
  • John A. Hewson, Paul Anderson, Andrew D. Gordon
  • 7th IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2013) | Official
• A Declarative Approach to Automated Configuration
  • John A. Hewson, Paul Anderson, Andrew D. Gordon
  • 26th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA ’12) | Official
• Modelling System Administration Problems with CSPs
  • John A. Hewson and Paul Anderson
  • 10th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef 2011)

Talks

• Panel Session: PDF as a Platform, the Challenge and the Prize
  • PDF Technical Conference 2015, San Jose, October 19, 2015
• Constraint-Based Autonomic Reconfiguration (PechaKucha lightning talk)
  • 7th IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2013), Philadelphia, 10th September, 2013
• A Declarative Approach to Automated Configuration
  • 26th Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA ’12), San Diego, 12th December 2012
• ConfSolve: System Configuration with CSPs
  • 2012 Oxford Configuration Workshop, Oxford, 13th January 2012
• Modelling System Administration Problems with CSPs
  • ModRef 2011, Perugia, Italy, 12th September 2011
• Constraint-Based Specifications for System Configuration
  • CISA Seminar, Edinburgh, 14th February 2011

Posters

• Demo: Inkwell Docs
  • BIDS Data Science Faire, University of California, Berkeley, 2nd May, 2017
• Automated System Configuration
  • Edinburgh Microsoft Research Joint Initiative in Informatics, Edinburgh, 2011
• Configuration Inference using CSPs
  • SICSA PhD Conference 2011, Edinburgh
• Constraint-based Specifications for System Configuration
  • Summer School 2010, Microsoft Research Cambridge | Website