I’m Jordan Thayer, and I’m not really sure how to answer the question of who am I. The answer that I think you’re looking for is pretty context dependent. I’m an academic, a software developer, a father, and a hobbyist streamer. I’ll use this space to talk about all of those things from time to time, but the focus is going to be on software development.
From a credentials standpoint, I’ve got a lot of computer science education. I graduated from the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Computer Science back in 2006. I went on to complete a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the University of New Hampshire under the guidance of Wheeler Ruml in 2012. My main area of research was in heuristic search.
Professionally, I’m a bit of a vagabond. I spent several years after grad school doing grant fulfillment work for both small and large research shops. Most of that work was in the realm of computer security, and more specifically the formal verification of systems.
I got away from grant chasing and went into the world of startups a couple of years ago. I was still working in computer security then, but I was more focused on user experience. I spent a lot of time looking at how planning, scheduling, and expert systems could be used to deliver results to the user in a more timely manner within the context of static analysis. When our startup got bought, I spent a while looking at program rewriting for automotive industry standards compliance.
Currently, I work for Software Engineering Professionals. I like to think of my work there as bringing the gospel of artificial intelligence to the masses. Less prosaically, I look for projects where it makes sense to apply AI techniques like scheduling and machine learning, and then I try to apply those techniques to build automated or semi-automated systems that are beneficial to our clients.