Ben Koska
I am passionate about new technologies in the area of Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on synthetic data. I have had the opportunity to work in multiple start-ups leading the design and development of several products.
Career
Stealth Deep Tech Startup
San Francisco, USA
I founded a stealth Deep Tech startup working on the future of Intelligence.
KOSKA GmbH
Vienna, Austria
I headed the software engineering department at KOSKA, as well as several artifical intelligence research projects.
Stealth Compiler Startup
London, England
I co-founded a stealth Tech startup and worked as CEO there, while I oversaw the development of the product.
Stealth FinTech Startup
London, England
I co-founded a stealth FinTech startup and worked as CTO there, while I was working there I oversaw the development of the product and hiring of software engineers.
Scribbly
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
I worked as a Software Engineer focused on developing a Machine Learning-based news analysis system for a security platform, an incident reporting tool, and a web app for electronic business cards.
Publications
Towards Multi-Modal Mastery: A 4.5B Parameter Truly Multi-Modal Small Language Model
2nd International Conference On Foundation And Large Language Models
We present a novel 4.5B parameter small language model that can handle multiple input and output modalities, including text, images, videos, and audio. Despite its small size, the model achieves near state-of-the-art performance on a variety of tasks, demonstrating the potential of multi-modal models to tackle complex real-world problems. Our approach leverages recent advancements in language modeling and multi-task learning to create a versatile and high-performing model that can even be deployed for edge inference. Experimental results show the model's strong performance across multiple benchmarks, paving the way for further progress in multi-modal artificial intelligence.
Simulated Realities are all you need: Synthetic Data for Enhanced Depth, Localization, and Object Detection in egocentric views
Under review
Augmented reality (AR) applications require precise spatial understanding to facilitate accurate mapping, object detection, and scene comprehension. However, real-world data for training such tasks is often difficult to obtain - and especially difficult to label - at scale and lacks the diversity needed for robust model performance. This paper introduces a synthetic data framework to advance AR capabilities, leveraging simulated environments with realistic lighting, textures, and complex scene interactions.
Volunteering
Patents
Education
Technical University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria • Computer Science, BSc
I am currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at the Technical University of Vienna with a focus on software engineering and artificial intelligence.
Spengergasse
Vienna, Austria • Computer Science, Ing.
I am finishing my Engineers's degree (Ing.) in Computer Science at Spengergasse, with a focus on software engineering and artificial intelligence.
Licenses & Certifications
CCNA: Enterprise Networking, Security, and Automation
Cisco
CCNA Enterprise certification with a focus on enterprise networking, network security, and automation, demonstrating proficiency in scalable network architectures, dynamic routing, mitigation of security threats, wide-area networks, virtualization, automation of programmable networks.
CCNA: Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials
Cisco
CCNA certification with a focus on switching, routing, and wireless essentials demonstrating proficiency in switching operations, wired and wireless LAN configuration using security best practices, redundancy protocols, and developed problem-solving skills.
Google Project Management Certificate
Project Managment Certificate by Google, demonstrating proficiency in project management, including planning, executing, and closing projects with a focus on communication, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement.
CCNA: Introduction to Networks
Cisco
CCNA certification, demonstrating proficiency in IP addressing, how physical, data link protocols support Ethernet, can configure connectivity between switches, routers and end devices to provide access to local and remote resources.
Compilers
Stanford University
Compilers course by Stanford University, demonstrating proficiency in compiler design, including lexical analysis, parsing, code generation, and optimization.
Speaking
I am me and I am you; Identity in the day and age of deepfakes
I spoke at the IT & Consultants day 2024, the premier IT conference organized by the Austrian Chamber of Commerce about the topic of deepfakes and deepfake detection.
Deep Fake Detection. We can create deepfakes, but can we also recognize them? A reach for the stars?
I spoke at the CIO Conference 2024, the largest IT conference in Austria, about deep fake detection and the current state of the art.
Next level software development. A compiler 10x faster?
I spoke at the CIO Conference 2023, the largest IT conference in Austria, about the future of software development and the potential of compilers to speed up development processes.
Languages
English
Native proficiency
German
Native proficiency