Philosophy

Copernicus, in addition to proving that the solar system is centered around the Sun, also wrote and spoke 5 languages, advised parliament, owned and defended a cathedral stronghold, wrote original works on economic monetary theory, and practiced as a successful physician. Marie Curie was a chemist and a physicist, created the theory of radiation, discovered two new elements, won two Nobel prizes, and was the first woman professor at the University of Paris. Hypatia, the last librarian at Alexandria, published important works in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and, especially important to beer and wine enthusiasts, she invented the hydrometer.

We are in an age when it has never been easier to learn a new skill. Though we may not all have the unique brilliance or privilege of our studious ancestors, I believe that we can still take lessons from their lives. Work hard. Follow your curiosity. Learn a new trade. Fail often. Try again. Be creative. Ask hard questions. As scientists and artists, we should be inspired by the example of the great people who came before us, if not as a practical example in the attainment, but as an example of the great potential of a single person to affect the world. Then every day, reflecting upon this, I try a little bit harder to be diverse, creative, industrious, and a good example for others to know that the trying is its own reward.

-Nate 9/27/2011

Education

• Master of Science, Computer Science
• University of New Mexico - 2006-2010
• GPA: 3.6

• Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
• University of New Mexico - 2000-2006
• Minor in Applied Mathematics

Publications

• Willits, D.; Broidy, L.; Zengin, M.; Lippert, A.; Gauntt, N.; Burch, C.; Healy, M.; Kim, J.; Ross, T.; Caudell, T.
• Agent-Based Modeling and Theoretical Developement in Criminology: A Simple Example Using the Strain Perspective
• Theoretical Criminology
• (in review) :: (in review), 2011

• Caudell, T.; Burch, C.; Zengin, M.; Gauntt, N.; Healy, M.
• Retrospective Learning of Spatial Invariants During Object Classification by Embodied Autonomous Neural Agents
• 2011 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)
• San Jose, California USA :: July 31 - August 5, 2011

• Aldridge, D.; Preston, L.; Gauntt, N., and Symons, N.
• Elastic wave radiation from a resonating line source
• Seismological Society of America Annual Meeting
• Santa Fe, New Mexico USA :: April 16-18, 2008

Manuscripts

Gauntt, N Implementing Neural Networks on GPU Hardware Unpublished UNM, written 2010 This paper surveys GPU implementations of numerous neural network simulators designed between 1998 and 2009. The simulators are compared in terms of underlying architecture and performance, where data is available. One of the benefits of implementing neural algorithms on the GPU is that the algorithms can often be debugged visually by displaying GPU memory pages as color images.

Gauntt, N Visualizing Dempster-Shafer Possibility Trees UNM CS Student Conference Albuquerque, New Mexico USA :: April 2010 This poster covers early work on the PIIA intelligence visualization tool (picture) including background and some pictures of related work. It was presented in a poster session at my home school's technical conference for computer science students.

Gauntt, N Assorted Survey Papers Unpublished UNM, written 2009-2010 The first paper was written for the end of term project in an advanced topics course in neural networks, surveying the hardware architectures, algorithms, and philosophy behind autonomous mobile robots built from 1966 to 2008. The second was written for an independent study in neural network design, categorizing visual debugging and analysis techniques for feed-forward neural architectures.

Projects

Graduate Research :: UNM :: 2010-2012 One of my first projects as a research assistant was to work on a robot simulator created by my adviser and colleagues. I refactored the OpenGL codebase for the simulator (left) and rewrote the neural network brain visualizer (middle), so that the visualizations could run in real time with the simulator, doubling as a visual debugger. Later, I worked on an interactive zooming interface for intelligence analysis (right), a novel application of treemaps that allows a user to browse an exponentially large scenario space while displaying likelihood information with colors and range bars.

Seismic Tools :: Sandia Labs :: 2008-2009 While working as a geophysicist student intern, I had to develop a visualizations in Matlab that could quickly process and visualize large seismic trace data files. On the left is an image generated by my seismic trace plotter. The middle frame shows frames from an animated wave plotter I wrote while working on modeling acoustic resonance. The document on the right describes a C library I wrote for efficient reading/writing of seismic data files in Matlab, freely available (archive).

Ray Tracer :: UNM :: Spring 2008 For a class in vector graphics, we built raytracers based on the physics of light. The left picture demonstrates refractive index, with glass on the back left and diamond on the front right. The right picture was the final project, including fractal noise-based cloud texture in the background, reflective surfaces, shadows, and nested dielectrics (a glass water tank) to the right.

Numerical Modeling :: UNM :: Fall 2007 This course was one of the most interesting and varied CS courses I've taken, covering topics like information theory, random variables and probability, Fourier series and transforms (pictured at right), matrix factorization, and Markov probability distributions. One of the final projects was to implement the Ising magnetic spin model in Matlab (pictured left) to calculate the statistical physics. Clockwise from top left shows how the magnetic domains coalesce over time, as orders of magnitude more rounds of Gibbs sampling are applied.

Code Samples

• libsegy-1.01.tar.gz Matlab/C library implementing fast SEG-Y (seismic trace file format) tools
• XPDiagram.jar Java Applet for various chart drawing utilities, alternately as (tar.gz)

Experience

Sandia/CSRI Filesystem Developer 2013-2014	Developed distributed filesystem components Coded FUSE driver support for HPC batch system Created benchmarks, collected and analyzed data
C, Linux, Parallel Programming, Bash, R

ARA Applications Programmer 2012-2013	Developed code for large HVAC simulation Made improvements and bug fixes Coded 3D layout for new floor plans
C++, CMake, Win32, Qt

UNM/ECE Dept. Research Assistant 2009-2012	Coded interactive intelligence analysis tool Parallelized multi-agent simulation engine Created graphical debugger for dense neural networks
OpenGL, C, C++, Parallel Programming, Haskell

Sandia Labs Geophysics Student Intern 2006-2009	Created high-volume seismic trace plotting tools Ran and managed large simulations on clusters Coded Matlab/C library for fast trace filtering
Matlab, C, C++, Unix Scripting, Visualization

UNM LADB and Math Dept. Student Intern 2006	Managed patches and provided tech. support Repaired and assembled computers Maintained off-site backups
System Administration, Tech. Support, Unix Scripting, PC Hardware

UNM CHTM Student Technician 2005	Machined metal parts for experiment apparatus Assembled electronic devices for plant control Maintained and repaired physical plant systems
Machining, Soldering, Wiring, Electronic Repair

UNM CS Dept. Teaching Assistant 2004	Taught lab lectures for class 'Algorithms in C' Graded homework assignments Coded visual library for students projects
C, Unix, Visualization

Sandia Natl. Labs Student Intern 2003-2004	Visualized large code project dependencies Automated Windows build and install system Created VB libraries for developer support
Graph Viz, InstallShield, Win32 Scripting, VB, C++

Sandia Natl. Labs Student Intern 2003	Designed web application for corporate training Merged databases into single SQL database
Apache, MySQL, Perl, XHTML, CSS, Access

Sandia Natl. Labs Student Intern 2002	Ran large simulations on Unix cluster Analyzed and plotted large output data Annotated maps and blueprints
Bash, Unix, Excel, Gimp

Advanced Materials Lab Student Intern 2001	Designed group web page Researched chemical database application Studied printer control language
Perl, XHTML, JavaScript

Hobbies

I have a variety of hobbies that eat up all my free time, including backpacking, cooking, baking, sausage making, brewing, woodworking, judging speech and debate, and annoying my wife with too many hobbies.