Pedro B
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC)
Expertise
Computer science, scientific computing, high-performance computing, parallel computing, GPU computing, numerical analysis, linear algebra, differential equations, physics simulations
Bio
Hi! My name is Pedro and I'm a Senior Software Engineer at VantAI. I really liked school and decided to pursue higher education, resulting in several degrees, a lot of internships, and other academic goodies. My whole career has been about solving math and physics problems with computers. I see computing and computer science as tools to answer bigger questions beyond just writing code; but the coding part is also one of the most fun parts of the process. Outside of work and research, I like playing instruments, eating all kinds of foods, and enjoying everything this beautiful city has to offer. Did I mention I live in NYC? Since I moved, I have eaten at 850+ restaurants, watched more than 40 theater/musical shows, and biked more than 1500 miles inside the city. I also teach Zumba classes and play pickleball.Project ideas
The Rebel Project
Have you ever wondered why we do things the way we do them? Why we drive on the left seat while riding on the right lane? Why we call it "going off" when the alarm sound is actually "going on"? It seems like we do certain things just because everybody does them in a standardized way. Well, no more! We are going rogue on these problems! \m/ @_@ \m/ While these are just silly examples, there are real questions and learning opportunities around using the "wrong" solution for a given problem. In this project, you'll pick a task in machine learning, scientific computing, programming, math, physics, or something else, that you'll solve using some unconventional approach, and we'll try to get an answer as to why a solution you propose may not be the best approach. Who knows? Maybe you'll find a better way to solve the problem in the end. Here are some examples, with varying degrees of difficulty. You can also propose your own problem: - How many components can we remove before a physics equation becomes useless (e.g., removing wind resistance in free-fall motion) - Arithmetic procedures using different approaches (e.g., multiplication starting with the most significant digit as opposed to the least significant digit) - Passing by reference vs passing by value for primitive values - Representing numbers in IEEE format with varying mantissa and exponent sizes - Using spheres for collision detection as opposed to cubes - Evaluating mathematical expression (e.g., sin, cos, exp, etc.) directly, as opposed to using series expansions