gistfile1.txt

# NOTE: Resume originally formatted to fit a standard terminal screen (80 px)

Fern Balsam (she/they)
community-funded open-source ml researcher / part-time outdoor adventurer
9 years of experience developing and aggressively optimizing neural networks
[ primary   ] goal: societal impact via applied research and surrounding work
[ secondary ] goal: pure research extending theory of deep learning
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 |                                                                             |
 |                                Achievements                                 |
 |                                                                             |
 | - Recognized by OpenAI cofounder & former head of AI at Tesla for           |
 | significantly advancing the world record on a well-known benchmark:         |
 | https://x.com/karpathy/status/1620103412686942208                           |
 |                                                                             |
 | - Received unconditional cash grant from 30 under 30 entrepreneur Daniel    |
 | Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to further support high            |
 | performance open source neural network research: https://aigrant.org/       |
 | (listed under “TySam”, name used during transition)                         |
 |                                                                             |
 | - Attended university from the ages of 16-20 on a full ride scholarship     |
 | as a National Merit Scholar, graduated with honors                          |
 |                                                                             |
 | - Proud Eagle Scout & long-distance backpacker                              |
 |                                                                             |
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 |                                                                             |
 |                               Research.Skills                               |
 |                                                                             |
 |                                                 beginner       skilled      |
#|   scratch implementation                        [##############......]      |
#|   distributed                                   [#####...............]      |
#|   architecture design                           [###############.....]      |
#|   long-term perf. refinement                    [##################..]      |
 |                                                                             |
#|   architecture types:                                                       |
#|   * transformer                                 [###############.....]      |
#|   * recurrent                                   [########............]      |
#|   * convolutional                               [##################..]      |
 |                                                                             |
 |                                                                             |
 |                                   Dev.Style                                 |
 |                                                                             |
 |                 rapid     [##################....]   methodical             |
 |                                                                             |
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 |                                                                             |
 |                              Career.Timeline                                |
 |                                                                             |
 |   [LU..*|BNSF*|BNSF..1.3y|EXP...................4.5y|Open-Source....2.5y]   |
 |        ^_____^ .25 y                                                        |
 |                                                                             |
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 |                               |   Details  |                                |
 |                                ------------                                 |
 |                                                                             |
 | 1|Intern                               2|Intern                             |
 | #|Liberty University [LU]              #|[BNSF] Railways                    |
 | #|tasks: [investigated,recommended     #|tasks: [automated,monitored]       |
 | #| improvements to] physical campus       mass repository migration to SVN  |
 |    badge security                                                           |
 |                                                                             |
 | 3|Software Developer                   4|ML Research Engineer               |
 | #|[BNSF] Railways                      #|Expedition Technology [EXP]        |
 | #|tasks: [migrated,maintained,         #|tasks:                             |
 | #| provided on-call support] for       #|* [source,filter,read,share]       |
 |    large-scale EDI messaging system    #|  relevant [papers,techniques]     |
 |                                        #|* [implement,prep,upgrade,maintain]|
 |                                        #|  deployable models sourced via    |
 |                                        #|  [papers,github]                  |
 |                                          * [create,clean,maintain] data     |
 |                                            [intake,pipelines,labels]        |
 |                                                                             |
 | 5|Community-Funded Open Source Researcher [Open-Source]                     |
 | # built several open-source projects & shared knowledge with community      |
 | #   members over several years, supported by donations, savings,            |
 | #   and occasional consulting/contracting work.                             |
 | # popular projects:                                                         |
 | #   - hlb-CIFAR10, reducing the previous longstanding DawnBench world       |
 | # record by >2.5x: https://github.com/tysam-code/hlb-CIFAR10                |
 | #   - hlb-gpt, a rapid and simple trainer for developing and testing        |
 | # language model techniques: https://github.com/tysam-code/hlb-gpt          |
 | #   - helped significantly contribute to reducing the world record time for |
 | # modded-nanoGPT: https://github.com/KellerJordan/modded-nanogpt            |
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 |                                                                             |
 | [SCHOOLING]                         [INTERESTS]                             |
 | liberty university -- 3.54 gpa      long-distance self-propelled adventure  |
 | comp science [maj], math [min].     info-theoretic approaches to            |
 | honors + national merit scholar        understanding neural networks        |
 |                                     building community                      |
 |                                     meaningful experiences                  |
 |                                                                             |
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 |                                          |~{ mailbox:[email protected] }~|
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