::::::::My Expert Service ::::::::::
I studied how languages can be represented using formal logical systems. I used computers to represent these logical systems. I was interested in how people and machines understand language and represent information.at the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation. I wrote software that would control robotic arms and eddy current scanners, and eventually turn it all into a squiggly line on a chart with lots of pretty colors. That was a great experience, as I got to see the research community first-hand. In thirty years, I plan to grow a big hippie beard, return to research, and make some more squiggly lines.
:::::::::Experience & Qualifications::::::::
I had worked in the software industry for about 5 years. I was working on speech recognition, language understanding and genome mapping. This turned out to be a great background for doing sophisticated AI for computer games. A friend of mine told me about a startup game company near where I lived called GameFx. I applied for a job there. When I went to see them they were just a small group of people in this really small ugly office above a restaurant. But they were all really talented, and the work they were doing was amazing. I was offered a job doing AI for their game. I didn't have any computer game experience, but I did have a lot of software development experience. And I was able to convince them that I could use the techniques I had learned in language understanding and genome mapping to do a good AI. I also had a good AI background from college (searching, logic, neural nets etc.) Given that I had lots of software experience I actually came into computer games at a fairly senior level. I was working on a major game system right from the first day. I was responsible for the AI and physics. This was a space sim called Sinistar Unleashed. It required AI to do flight planning for enemies, flocking, missile guidance, and the AI for a number of sophisiticated boss monsters. It was pretty hard work. Writing computer games touches many more areas than the work I had done before. In my previous jobs I really had to focus on a small well defined problem set. In games I was doing physics simulation one day, flight controls another day, obstacle avoidance, skeletal animations etc. My first job in software was QA for a speech recognizer. I have heard some people say that starting in QA is not good because you get pigeon-holed as a QA tester and no one takes you seriously after that. It is true at first, but just take the opportunity to learn as much as you can, and if you can't break out of QA in one company, you can always change companies.
::::::::::MY LIVE CONTACT / VIRTUAL OFFICE STATUS::::::::::::
