Jacob Valdez

Hello! I’m a machine learning engineer, roboticist, and entreprenuer at my startup, Limboid LLC, where I work to develop artificial general intelligence and affordable humanoid robots. During the day, I work as a software engineering intern at Motio Inc. I’m currently in a senior at the University of Texas at Arlington working towards my bachelor’s degree in computer science. I love open source work, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When I’m not interacting with artificial agents, you’ll find me working with real people. I hope that includes you! more ››
Education
June 2020 – Present, Arlington, TX
GPA 3.7/4.0; graduate August 2022
September 2014 – May 2018, Waxahachie, TX
GPA 3.9/4.0; 85 hours taken; Graduated Magna Cum Laude
August 2014 – May 2018, Waxahachie, TX
GPA 3.9/4.0; 5.6/6.0; Graduated rank 7
Employment
- Develop Soterre for Qlik Sense
June 2021 – May 2022, 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)
- Collaborated with research group to evolve and test a flask-based statistical visualization tool CoWiz
- Developed full stack web server MLN-Dashboard using Next-React-GraphQL-Strapi stack
- Developing artificial general intelligence :brain: and humanoid robots!
- Taken on roles: ML R&D, mechatronics, and robotics engineering, PCB designer, cloud and web dev, other programming, system architecting, supply-chain optimization, logistics, supplier negotiation, accounting, and the typical entrepreneur stuff
- We’re almost ready for production!
May 2016 – March 2020, 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

- 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

September 2021
- Presented at the 2021 Broaden and Build Conference

- My go-to solution when professors ask you to not use a third-party autograd framework
- Later extended to include connect-4 reinforcement learning support
- Developers can purchase jnumpy-themed apparel here

- 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

- 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

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

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

July 2019
- Employee phone detection computer vision system
- Stack: web 1.0, tensorflow.js, mobilenet
- 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

- 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

- 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
Certifications
Achievements
For co-authoring ModViz: A Modular and Extensible Architecture for Drill-Down and Visualization of Complex Data
For submitting Limboid LLC business proposal
For presenting work Broadening and Building Beyond Classical Reinforcement Learning
For presenting work Predictive General Intelligence
For presenting the CookieBaker 3D Printer to a 100-person audience