About Me

(in about 1312 words)

Intro

I am currently a graduate student at Florida Atlantic University, graduating December 2022 with a Master's in Artificial Intelligence. Isn't that cool that AI is now a degree program? I'm really fascinated in the how the nature of knowledge is being probed by developing intelligent automated systems. My research involves investigating how AI can be used to enable automated aquaculture management systems. I hope my work can lead to technology that supports more harmonious relationships between man, technology and nature.

Current research interests

I am working on a lot of different (read: too many) things at the moment. My main effort involves research at Dr. Bing Ouyang's lab at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, where we are developing the Hybrid Aerial Underwater Robotic System. The aim of this research is to reduce labor costs for aquaculture farms with intelligent networked robotics. We are also working on several underwater imaging and lidar projects. I also work for the Silicon Valley AI startup Deep Forest Sciences to implement bioinformatics tools in the open source machine learning library DeepChem. These tools are enabling biologists to use state of the art AI technology without needing to be AI experts. Besides all that, I continue to contribute to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab building a realtime object tracking system for use on military vessels.

Some history

  • Age 3: I learned to swim, and I was on the swim team for like 10 years.
  • Age 6: I learned to tie my shoes after years of wearing velcro straps.
  • Age 12: I picked up the guitar and got really obsessed with it. I played a guitar solo at my middle school band recital. I still have a passion for music, but nowadays I play the Gotar.
  • Age 13: I travel to Holland to represent the US in a swimming tournament. I got 6th place in the 200 m breaststroke which I thought was pretty good. I couldn't top that so I quit swimming.
  • Age 14: I started on the wrestling team in sophomore year of high school. I made it to regionals by my senior year.
  • Age 15: I started on the cross country team in junior year. I got shin splints really bad, but by the time I figured out how to run without injurying myself I really enjoyed it.
  • Age 15: I began my professional career as a Subway Sandwich Artist in Brightwood, DC.
  • Age 17: Planning for my career after high school, I walked into a Marine Corps recruiter's office. After looking at my grades, the recruiter recommends I go to college and join ROTC, so that's what I did. Thank you SSG Gonzalez!
  • Age 18: Enlisted in the Ohio National Guared, attended basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia and finished my freshman year of at Ohio State.
  • Age 21: I was elected the President of the OSU Scabbard and Blade chapter. We hosted talks and training by some really cool military specialists.
  • Age 22: I graduated with my Bacherlor's in Mechanical Engineering (after 10 semesters) and began my career as an Army infantry officer
  • Age 23: I moved to Germany where I was stationed
  • Age 25: My 400 year old apartment in Regensburg, Germany burned down after my landlord tried to take down vines growing on the building by burning them.
  • Age 25: I left the army, started at Motorola Solutions as a mechanical engineer, and bought a house 20 minutes from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
  • Age 26: Began my Master's in Artificial Intelligence
  • Age 27: I got my scuba certification, then the dive boat on my first dive sank. I was rescued by the boat behind the news anchor in that video. The propeller did not wrap up the anchor line. There were were high waves, it was a small boat and the captain tied to the shipwreck in the stern, so water started taking on.
  • Age 28: Graduated with my Master's, and began looking for PhDs

When I'm not working I like

  • Scuba diving
  • Running
  • Jiu Jitsu
  • Skiing
  • Florida weather
  • My hammock
  • Books, these are my favorites
  • Music
  • Podcasts like Freakonomics, Machine Learning Street Talk and info security show Risky Business
  • Cerebral sci-fi movies like Vanilla Sky, Inception, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Prestige, Donnie Darko, and Mr. Nobody
  • Video games with good environment and narrative like Fallout New Vegas, Abe's Oddysee, Dark Souls, Half Life (especially in VR)
  • Team based shooters like Counter Strike and Halo

Travel / Geography

  • I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, just north of Washington DC.
  • I've been to Russia like 4 or 5 times in my childhood. I haven't been back since I was 12 because they didn't let me leave last time.
  • I lived in Columbus, Ohio for 5 years during my undergrad.
  • After college I moved to Columbus, Georgia for US Army training.
  • After training I was stationed in Bavaria, Germany. I lived an hour from Munich in a town called Regensburg. No, I didn't learn German, most people knew English.
  • While in Europe I traveled to the majority of countries in Europe. My favorites were Spain and Switzerland.
  • I've been to Canada and Mexico plenty of times, which is always fun.
  • I did a cruise around the Caribbean, does that count?
  • I've been to most big cities in the US, San Diego was my favorite.
  • I'm a fan of national parks. Top 3 are Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, and the Antelope Canyon.

Favorite Concerts (with links to the actual events)

Fun facts

  • I love karaoke. I don't even need to be drunk!
  • I have a third nipple. It's tiny and it's a few inches under my left nipple. My mom and her mom have the same.
  • I used to play a double neck guitar with a tapping technique.
  • Dennis Rodman is an inspiration for me to be myself, because if he can be a alcoholic crossdressing NBA superstar then so can I.

I dream of

  • Global data privacy so politicians can't manufacture consent to take away our rights
  • College for all Americans, because I want to live in an educated society
  • Universal healthcare, because much of the costs are caused by our complex and bureaucratic system and exploitation by corporate interests
  • Open source robotics preventing the monopolization of labor
  • Artifical general intelligence to be our personal oracles
  • Personal submarines
  • 'I know kung fu' level brain interfaces
  • Affordable organically grown food so we can stop the growth of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's and autism caused by herbicides and pesticides
  • My own personal automated aquaponics system
  • Useful natural language computer interfaces like William in Another Life, not like Hal 9000
  • Micro robot swarms that cut my grass, weed my garden and fertilize my flowers
  • Legal GMO livestock so we don't need use 50% of the world's habitable land to grow animal feed
  • Affordable cellular agriculture so we don't need to raise animals just for their meat
  • Python without the GIL
  • Nitrogen fixing microbes in commercial agriculture
  • Photo realistic text to video generators so anyone can be a movie director
  • Affordable graphene to build a space elevator
  • Robotaxis with large capacities that run on regular schedules to busy areas, aka buses
  • AI generated nonlinear narratives and environments for entertainment
  • Quantum computers to model chemical simulations to make some of the items of this list possible
  • Room temperature super conductors for actual floating hoverboards, and fusion power I guess
  • Analog processors, neuromorphic processors, photonic processors, carbon nanotube processors etc.
  • Biochemical computers to program cybernetic bacteria and store data in DNA
  • Robust mechanical pencils
  • Badass human prosthetic augmentation a la Deus Ex, Ghost in the Shell, Cyberpunk 2077