class Andrew(object):
def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
self.birthday = {"month": "May",
"day": 15,
"year": 2000}
self.age = 21
self.family = {
"brothers": 1
"sisters": 1
"parents": 2
}
self.location = "Philadelphia, PA"
self.school = "University of Pennsylvania"
self.major = {
"undergraduate": "Mechanical Engineering",
"masters": "Robotics (CV & ML)"
}
self.interests = {
"academic": ["computer vision", ...
"machine learning", ...
"research", ...
"robotics", ...
"autonomy"],
"personal": ["soccer", ...
"tennis", ...
"golf", ...
"hiking", ...
"sailing", ...
"meditation", ...
"modern art"]
}
self.music = {
"play": ["guitar", ...
"ukulele", ...
"percussion"],
"listen": ["hyperpop", ...
"alt rock", ...
"hip hop", ...
"literally anything on spotify"]
}
self.food = {
"cooking": ["steak", ...
"squid", ...
"salmon", ...
"ricebowls"]
"eating out": ["Sampan", ... # Great restaurant in Philadelphia (asian fusion)
"Amada", ... # Another great restaurant in Philadelphia (spanish)
"Morimoto" ... # Yet another great restaurant in Philadelphia (japanese)
"sushi", ...
"gnocchi", ...
"filet mignon"]
}
self.pets = None
self.socials = {
"instagram": my instagram,
"facebook": my facebook,
"github": my github,
"weights and biases": my WandB,
}
Sorry, in English:
I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and now I attend the University of Pennsylvania. Although I’ve always felt at home in Philadelphia, I’m a pretty restless person. As a way to explore the world, my own spirituality, and serve those in need, I went on several volunteer trips to Asia throughout high school. I’ve travelled to the Himalayas of Central Asia and spent a summer teaching English and Math at a government primary school. While there, I experienced some pretty crazy altitude sickness and got lost in some huge cities, but all in all, I consider this one of my favorite summers ever. I’ve also travelled to Southeast Asia, where I kayaked in Ha Long Bay, tasted roasted tarantula in the Cambodian jungle, and watched the sun rise over Angkor Wat. I also worked in a government primary school and helped build a sleeping quarters for orphaned students.
Once I graduated high school, I felt like my biggest priority became my studies. Since then, I have not looked back. STEM subjects are CHALLENGING. There’s no other way to put it. When I came to Penn as a Mechanical Engineering and Math major, I quickly realized how large of a jump I had made from high school. My applied physics and math coursework got me really interested in mechanics, linear algebra, dynamics, etc, but also took a few years off the end of my life. I took this interest into some interesting research projects in mechanical engineering and robotics. These projects became a way for me to explore concepts in a scientific way, which really suits how I approach tasks. Alongside these projects, I worked through my major curriculum, and decided to start taking some computer science courses. Almost immediately, I got hooked on coding. For about a year, my interests in MEAM and CS competed for my main focus, but eventually I found myself much more satisfied and interested in CS. For a while, I didn’t want to admit this to myself because I was afraid of being the guy that “majored in the wrong thing in college.” It was probably about this time that the I discovered the incredibly beautiful field of Machine Learning.
Taking my first Machine Learning course in college was transformtive and propelled me to apply to the submatriculation program in Robotics, which is a 4+1 undergraduate and masters program. Since then, I’ve explored many aspects of machine learning but most recently I have been enthralled by deep learning and computer vision. My most recent research project is an investigation into visually understanding human behavior. Led by Dr. Jianbo Shi, we are propose to collect a multi-modal dataset of human subjects solving escape room style puzzles, and attempt to develop a reinforcement learning agent to explore unknown environments by understanding and imitating human behavior. We have collected some initial data, such as Matterport scans of the inside of rooms, as well as FPV GoPro footage, Azure Kinect RGB-D data, and Insta360 spherical footage. Soon I’ll be updating my projects section to give a better idea of the project and my role in it. Cheers!