Resume | CV
Experienced research scientist and technical lead with a
demonstrated history tackling difficult technical problems
that require multi-disciplinary solutions. Strong engineering
professional skilled in Computer Science, Algorithms, Machine
Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mobile and Wearable
Computing, and UX/UI design. Publications in premier
conferences and journals, and inventor on 45 issued
patents.
- Skills
-
- Planning algorithms
- Machine learning
- Simulation & modeling
- UX/UI design
- Wearable computing
- Ubiquitous computing
- Technical
-
- System architecture
- Data analysis
- Experimental design
- Parallel processing (Flume & Apache Beam)
- Experience
-
Loon LLC. (formerly X / Google X) Nov 2011 - Aug 2021
Tech Lead, Research Scientist
- Designed and developed mission control and balloon simulation
system, first as sole developer and later as team lead. The system was
the primary tool for launch planning, flight tracking, and balloon
recovery for the first three years
of Project
Loon, Google X's project to
provide wireless internet to rural areas using high-altitude
balloons.
- Designed algorithms for steering balloons to a target by catching
winds at different altitudes. Conceived and co-created algorithm that
became the basis for all of Loon's long-term balloon planning
algorithms.
- Led team effort to simulate and visualize typical customer
experience in different service regions and under different
conditions. Results identified regions where service could be provided
using significantly fewer balloons, leading to a major strategic shift
to focus on tropical latitudes.
- Conceived of static metrics to quickly compute ability to station
keep over a service region, and developed tools to compute and
visualize them. These metrics became the primary means of identifying
potential service regions.
- Conceived, designed and developed novel system for generating
tunable synthetic wind noise for use in balloon simulation. The
resulting system became a key component of Loon's simulation
architecture.
- Developed tools, metrics and data visualizations for evaluating
wind forecast error across all historic flight data.
- Took ownership of Loon's wind-mixer, a system for improving
short-term wind forecasts using Gaussian processes. Developed changes
that improved short-term forecast accuracy by 24%.
- Designed and led development of architecture for integrating
real-time storm data into Loon's simulation and planning
architecture.
- Ten issued patents.
Google X Apr 2011 - Oct 2011
Tech Lead, UX designer, Research Scientist
- Designed, prototyped and evaluated UI and UX elements for what
eventually became Google
Glass.
- Designed and ran UX study examining the physical limits of
comfortable gaze angle, resulting in recommendations that were
incorporated into the final design.
- Six issued patents.
Ricoh eWriter Solutions Apr 2010 - Mar 2011
Senior E-Paper Interface Architect, Team Lead, Manager
Ricoh Innovations California Research Center 2001 - 2010
Senior Research Scientist
- Education
-
PhD, Media Arts and Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Media Lab)
Software Agents Group
Thesis: Just-In-Time Information Retrieval.
Investigated the design of JITIR agents: software that suggests useful
information based on a person's local context.
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Pattie Maes.
-
Master of Science, Media Arts and Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Media Lab)
Software Agents Group
Thesis: PHISH-Nets: Planning Heuristically In Situated Hybrid
Networks. Presented a behavior-selection algorithm for
autonomous 3D graphical robots in noisy environments.
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Pattie Maes.
Bachelor of Science, Electrical Eng. & Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis: Doing the Right Thing Even Better.
Evaluated and enhanced the Agent Network Architecture for behavior
selection in autonomous robots.
Thesis Supervisors: Dr. Pattie Maes and Dr. Marvin Minsky.