Professional / Research
I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. My advisor is Manuela Veloso. See my publications page for a complete list of the papers I've (co-)authored. See my resume for full details about the research projects I've worked on.
In general, my research interests include the application of artificial intelligence or machine learning techniques to improve the performance of real-world systems. Most of my graduate research has focused on teamwork strategies for RoboCup, the international robot soccer competition. For my doctoral thesis research, I am investigating how agents can act near-optimally in timed, zero-sum games, such as robot soccer. Since agents need to reason about winning (being ahead when time runs out), the optimal policy in these domains is nonstationary and score-dependent. I have a AAAI paper that describes some of my preliminary work.
In July-October 2005, I was an intern at Sony in Tokyo, Japan. During my internship, I worked on multirobot map-building using the QRIO humanoid robot.
I support open access to scientific work.
Personal
I'm a Minnesota native -- I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate. I like Minnesota weather (Pittsburgh is too tropical!)
I've worked on numerous open-source software projects. See my software page for more information.
As a general rule, I like interactive entertainment and dislike non-interactive entertainment. I'm not a fan of TV or movies, but love board games, card games, video games, and reading. (Books count as interactive entertainment because a good book always makes you think... though I will admit I don't read nearly as much as I should.) I play tennis.
Trivia
I proposed to my wife by posting obfuscated Perl code on perlmonks.org. This led to my being mentioned in a Wikipedia article and the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip (though my name was changed to "William" -- presumably to protect the innocent?)
I was Slashdotted in 2002 because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibited import of a serial cable that was meant to be used for a real-time systems class. I believe the DMCA has had a chilling effect on legitimate computer science research and should be repealed or struck down.
Causes I support:
100 Robots for 100 Kids
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Disregard this word: ectoheim
elkcheese
