Jacob F. Valdez
Jacob Valdez. Human. I build stuff.
Started programming VB6 when I was 10. Branched out over the years: C#, HTML/CSS/JS, Arduino, Python, TypeScript, AWS, Android, etc. etc. Did lots of engineering projects too. Also, lots of independant study; glad I did Cal I-III and DiffEq when I was 17, which helped a ton with the DL math. Stumbled across arxiv.org by accident in 2018 and fell in love with AI. Saw the future, and read ave. 1+ paper/day for 3 years following. Went back to school for CS in 2020; graduated Summer 2022. Spent the rest of 2022 as a SwE at Motio. Left to work on a full-scale humanoid robot, but then realized many important components of the robotics ecosystem were missing, so I started a general purpose robotics kit.
Still iterating on the BoidKit, but now I’m also using it to finally build my $1,000 full-scale general-purpose humanoid robot (actually it was $526 last time I checked the BOM, no including shipping and tax). This is the most important project of my entire life. I talk about it on all my socials. If you have any love for science, technology, engineering, innovation, product development, etc., etc., please reach out about joining the team. more ››
Education
- 2020 - 2022
BSCS
The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX
- Studied CS with focus on ML
- Networked with professors, PhD's, and ML industry figures
- Also learned to operate CNC's and shop equiptment at the FabLab
- GPA: 3.6/4.0
- 2014 - 2018
AAS in Mathematics
Navarro College, Waxahachie, TX
- 85 hours completed
- Graduated Magna Cum Laude
- GPA: 3.9/4.0
- 2014 - 2018
STEM classes + Navarro College and UT Tyler dual-credit program
Waxahachie Global High School, Waxahachie, TX
- Created dozens of projects and videos, wrote a handful of programs, and gave more than a dozen presentations
- Took Calculus I-III and Linear Differential Equations in my senior year and made A+'s
- Graduated rank 7
- GPA: 3.9/4.0; 5.6/6.0
Experience
- 2022 - 2023
Software Engineer
Motio Inc
- Develop Soterre for Qlik Sense
- Started as intern in June; full-time after August 16th 2022
- 2021 - 2022
Student Research Assistant
IT Lab, UTA
- Collaborated with research group to evolve and test a flask-based statistical visualization tool CoWiz (renamed as Dash)
- Developed full stack web server MLN-Dashboard using Next-React-GraphQL-Strapi stack
- 2021 - 2022
Student Research Assistant
UTA College of Social Work, Arlington TX
- Maintained and enhanced multi-platform (iOS and Android) data collecting application MyAmble and web admin dashboard
- Stack: javascript, firebase, flutter (mobile), and vue (admin dash)
- 2016 - 2020
Crew Trainer
McDonald's, Midlothian TX
- Led safety committee and addressed employees during 30-minute monthly safety meetings
- Trained employees on-the-job and formally
- In addition to 4 years of formal education, actively used Spanish on-the-job
Projects
-
- Some of my favorite personal songs 🎶
- Wasn’t intending to release, but after doing “Standing Up Together” decided to go ahead and make a full album of my work
- Available on SoundCloud
-
- Proof of concept of the creative potential of ML models
- Stack: GPT-3, Jekyll, render.com
-
node-tree
❘ module for generating synthetic demonstration-description pairs using psuedo context-free grammar
Spring 2022 – Present 🚧 -
- provides simple abstractions and functions for encoding and decoding arbitrary python objects
- introduces intelligent object creation / selection / other runtime code generation and execution features
- will support differentiable programming (including differentiable control flow) and reinforcement programming
-
- Unifying framework for multitasking × multimodal × { supervised, self-supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement } = multi-paradigm learning
-
- Initial architect for server until research assistant role ended
- Stack: typescript, react, next.js, GraphQL, Prisma, and later Strapi
- Presented on design and development in May 2022
- The Multi-Agent Network (aka: the
MAN
) ❘ A modular developer-oriented framework for integrating pretrained and learning agents
October 2021 – Present 🚧- A modular developer-oriented framework for integrating pretrained and learning agents
- 👩🏽🌾 The Fertile Cresent ❘ Ecosysten of projects, repositories, and libraries to promote the advancement of artificial intelligence
October 2021 – Present 🚧- Computatrum: an AI agent that interacts with a computer using standard peripherals (keyboard, mouse, display, etc.) Limboid/computatrum
- The Multi-Agent Network (MAN): a modular developer-oriented framework for integrating pretrained and learning agents Limboid/man
-
TensorCode
: Python library for intelligent run-time code analysis and code-gen using deep learning Limboid/tensorcode Limboid/deep-tree -
Unsupervised
: keras look-alike for modular unsupervised deep learning Limboid/unsupervised -
node-tree
: generative design library for synthesizing animations, web content, and task-labeled environment interactions Limboid/node-tree - and many more repo’s
- Broadening and Building Beyond Classical Reinforcement Learning ❘ Affective psychology + multi-agent reinforcement learning
September 2021- Presented at the 2021 Broaden and Build Conference
- Summer Break 2021! (album) ❘ A collection of various songs capturing various emotions I experienced during the 2021 summer break
August 2021- My first musical 🎶 expidition
- Origonally for personal pleasure, but later posted for others to enjoy
- Available on SoundCloud
-
- Web developer on covid19 data visualization dashboard project
- Stack: Python, pandas, flask
-
- Android app developer in a 4-person group
- Stack: Java, Kotlin, SQLite, Android
-
- One graph isn’t enough; multigraph neural networks are the way to go!
- Enables end-to-end differentiable, dynamic graph construction, node-centric multihead attention, and many other powerful features
- Developed library on top of tensorflow and keras
-
- Forked from alshedivat/al-folio
- Tech used: Jekyll, liquid, jupyter, GPT-3, github
-
- Team research project analyzing misinformation related to coronavirus vaccination hesitancy and sentiment and semantics of the COVID19 pandemic
- We literally worked around the clock for the weekend of the Datathon
-
pip install jplotlib
- A useful library, until I discovered
plt.subplots
-
- developed variant of the popular unsupervised learning algorithm SOM
- available on pypi:
pip install tf-som
- Predictive General Intelligence ❘ Theoretical framework an plan for developing artificial general intelligence
March 2021 - DesparadosAEye ❘ Project manager, general app developer, and ML engineer for a 5-person group developing open-ended Android chatbot
January 2021 – May 2021- Stack: blender-bot, Kotlin, Java, SQLite, Android
- Full-stack ML project involving research & training, presenting at UTA Innovation Day 2021, and porting Facebook’s blender-bot model to tflite
-
multi-graph-former
❘ Like a transformer, but for graph2graph instead of seq2seq
September 2020 – May 2021- Sequences are just a special class of graphs. The multi-graph-former can process any kind of graph.
- Supports intra- and inter-graph attention, vert updates, and edge updates with dynamic structure
- Implemented gated-update mechanism for both vertices and edges with einsum-based operations
- Example applies multi-graph-former to building a graph-structured hidden state for a recurrent neural network that encodes a sequence of words
- Home Internet Factory ❘ CNC router + 3D printer + Raspberry Pi 4 + camera + Internet
April 2020 – May 2020- Internet connected prototyping machine hub
- Raspberry Pi 4 served as gateway to tabletop CNC router, 3D printer, two cameras, and 3.3V logic I/O auxiliary interfaces
- Published article IndustrialAutomation@home describing journey to develop and operate home internet factory
- Workplace Surveillance System ❘ When you need to catch employees on their phone, this will do the trick!
July 2019- Employee phone detection computer vision system
- Stack: web 1.0, tensorflow.js, mobilenet
- Live demonstration to employer succeeded identifying employees on their phone, but employer didn’t end up purchasing a subscription
-
- Active project to develop teachable yet autonomous open-ended computer interaction agents
-
- Hydraulic actuated, endoskeletal humanoid robot
- Technologies: 3D Printing, CNC routing, plasma cutting, PCB fab
- Artifacts available on request
-
- Rule-based past and present tense English and Spanish translator
- Programmed in C# with Visual Studio
- Formalized many more aspects of English – Spanish translation
-
- Automated stochiometry solver for CHEM 1411/12
- Programmed in C# with Visual Studio
-
- Basic Spanish – English translation system
- Programmed in C# with Visual Studio
- Implements formal language parsing and production system
-
- 36”×36” sheet metal cutter with server and Arduino client control systems
- Designed and developed C# .svg parser, toolpath scheduler, and optimizer, Arduino controller with serial protocol and electronics, and CNC machine with electrodischarge machining head.
- Presented on project in May 2015 and June 2016
- Development journey published here
-
- Helps students avoid plagiarism
- Hybrid Google site and Web 1.0 app written in text editor!
-
- Learned mechanical engineering basics
- Intended to make a 3D printer, but extruder never added
- Re-attempted project in October 2014 with design modifications
Achievements
- 2022-02-15
2022 Future Texas Business Legend Award Finalist
Texas Business Hall of Fame
- For submitting Limboid LLC business proposal
- 2022-04-15
Co-Author on Paper Accepted to Baltic DB&IS 2022 Conference
Baltic DB&IS 2022
- 2021-09-27
Broaden and Build Conference Honorable Mention
UTA College of Social Work
- For presenting work Broadening and Building Beyond Classical Reinforcement Learning
- 2021-04-01
SCRF Honorable Mention + $100 award
UTA CSE Dept
- For presenting work Predictive General Intelligence
Certifications
- Feb 2022
AWS Certified Machine Learning Engineer – Specialty
- April 2021
Google TensorFlow Developer Certification
- Oct 2020
DeepLearning.AI TensorFlow Developer
- Sept 2020
Deep Learning Specialization by DeepLearning.AI
- Mar 2019
AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- Mar 2019
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
- Mar 2019
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
Long-Term Goals
-
Help people all over the world with humanoid robots
- Develop a mass-produceable affordable, intelligent humanoid robot
- Manually bootstrap production, but transition to robots making robots
- Deploy on-demand humanoid-robots-as-a-service on the basis of their humanitarian, social, and economic impact
Other Interests
- Walking, hanging out with friends, reading papers, and twittering
- I'm never going to have enough time to satisfy most of my interests