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Portrait of Rachel Thomas
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Rachel Thomas

Professor of Practice, Queensland University of Technology, Centre for Data Science

  • Professor of Practice, Queensland University of Technology, Centre for Data Science13
  • Co-founder (re-joined fast.ai, which had grown into Answer.AI, per an October 2026 blog post), fast.ai134

Rachel Thomas writes a blog on AI, science, education, and ethics, including essays on machine learning in medicine and biology and on AI hype. Rachel is a professor of practice at Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Data Science and co-founded fast.ai, whose free Practical Deep Learning for Coders course teaches deep learning to coders. Rachel was the founding director of the University of San Francisco Center for Applied Data Ethics, created and taught a data ethics course, and wrote book chapters including for Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and PyTorch.123

At a glance

Current roles
Professor of Practice +1 more
Sector
University
Education
Duke
Work listed
2
Honors
1
Sources cited
5
Profile reviewed

Career

Thomas earned a PhD in mathematics at Duke University, is an author of "A Mathematical Model of Glutathione Metabolism", and was an early data scientist and software engineer at Uber. With Jeremy Howard, Thomas co-founded fast.ai and its free course, Practical Deep Learning for Coders.13

At the University of San Francisco, Thomas designed and taught graduate courses on natural language processing and computational linear algebra in the Master of Science in Data Science program, and was the founding director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics. Thomas is a professor of practice at Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Data Science, and in an October 2026 blog post wrote of having re-joined fast.ai, which had grown into Answer.AI.134

Teaching and writing

Thomas created and taught a data ethics course and wrote book chapters for Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and PyTorch, 97 Things About Ethics Everyone in Data Science Should Know, and Redesigning AI. In a 2020 arXiv paper with David Uminsky, Thomas argued that overemphasizing metrics is a fundamental problem for AI, and Thomas's about page lists a related paper, "Reliance on Metrics is a Fundamental Challenge for AI", in Patterns.15

Thomas's blog covers AI, science, education and ethics, including essays on machine learning in medicine such as "Medicine's Machine Learning Problem" for the Boston Review. Talks have included a keynote on the new era in NLP at the 2019 SciPy conference and a keynote at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Symposium.21

Work and contributions

Timeline

  1. Gave the keynote "The New Era in NLP" at the SciPy 2019 conference.1
  2. Posted "The Problem with Metrics is a Fundamental Problem for AI" with David Uminsky.5

Other documented roles

Roles the sources document that are not confirmed as current.

  • Founding director, University of San Francisco Center for Applied Data Ethics13

Honors and recognition

  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship · Howard Hughes Medical Institute1

Where they work

Suggest a correction or removal

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References

5 sources · profile reviewed Oct 21, 2026 · data updated Oct 21, 2026

  1. About – Rachel Thomas, PhDRachel Thomas · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  2. AI, science, education, & ethics – Rachel Thomas, PhDRachel Thomas · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  3. About fast.aifast.ai · Official page · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  4. Update: I've returned to fast.ai – Rachel Thomas, PhDRachel Thomas · Official page · published Oct 20, 2026 · accessed Oct 21, 2026
  5. The Problem with Metrics is a Fundamental Problem for AI (arXiv 2002.08512)arXiv · Paper · published Feb 20, 2020 · accessed Oct 21, 2026