Mike Tapp

Data Scientist and Digital Ethnographer
michael.tapp91@gmail.com
0771 4231 421
linkedin.com/in/michael-tapp-ds/

About Me

Research-driven Data Scientist specializing in Large Language Models (LLMs) and computer vision architectures. Have built a data driven research lab from start up, through to sale and now lead a team over 20 data practioners across analytics, science, engineering and AI to deliver ML driven products for global social media agency .

Throughout my career researching digital spaces, I've witnessed how divided and inequitable society has become so my personal mission is to use my data and leadership skills to empower people by introducing empathy back to digital spaces.

Technical Core

Python R Transformers (HuggingFace) TensorFlow BigQuery Looker SQL & NoSQL Git / CI-CD

Employment

Director of Data & Innovation@ SAMY
2022 — Present
  • Taken over leadership of all global data initiatives for SAMY building ML driven global data products to support social media research.
  • United a team of 20 practioners to work together to build scalable self service analytics for the rest of the agency.
  • Responsible for AI governance and integration - ensuring ethical and scalable AI use.
Lead Data Scientist @ SHARE
2017-2022
  • Joined social media startup SHARE to create the analytics and research function, growing to lead the research lab until acquision by SAMY.
  • Led the creation of inhouse NLP tools and models.
  • Delivered commercial research projects for key clients like Microsoft, North Face, and Sky - growing commercial revenue from research from zero to £4m annually.
Research Analyst@ Smart Energy GB
2015— 2017
  • Early career researcher conducting statistical analyses monitoring the progress of the national smart meter rollout.
  • Responsible for delivering quarterly research studies on consumer opinion of smart meters as well usage reports for UK energy suppliers.

Talks and Papers

Oct 2025
"White Lighter - A balanced take on applied AI"
Presenting experimental results on how and why AI driven projects fail in a post-LLM world.
June 2023
"Beyond Sentiment- Measuring Peak and Pit Brand Memories on Social"
Co-presenting with the psychology team at Microsoft - exploring how traditional research methods fail to capture the emotive nuances of digital communication and introducing an alternative measurement framework .

Awards

2019
BIMA100
Recognised as one of the top 100 most influential people working in tech in the UK for services to Data Science.