A co-founder at KLOA, an AI startup at Univ of Washington. We are pioneering search personalization algorithms to serve small and mid-size e-commerce brands.As the CEO, I lead teams of engineers, UX researchers, designers and growth. I'm a technical contributor in algorithm development, product development, and interaction design. KLOA is a search personalization utility for SMB e-commerce brands. We help shoppers find what they're looking for faster. That helps brands sell more! The utility is an interface, personalization algorithm, and product recommender.I geek out on challenges that involve deep reading, experimentation, problem-solving and risk. I'm comfortable with ambiguity. I view startups as a long-form troubleshooting exercise. I'm a believer in Thiel's 0-to-1 and Musk's first-principles (but not their politics!)

Exploration of search and recommender services for e-commerce. A deep dive into ranking and retrieval algorithms, query refinement, cloud computing for delivering search services.Implemented an algorithm from Google for entity-centric query refinement. Completed app development that integrates the tasks of text entry and product recommendation. Extended earlier market research exposing the opportunity for context-dependend keyboards (compared with the generic iOS and Android keyboards).

Completed a power analysis study for an industrial site. Scroll down for further details about power engineering experience.

Performed customer discovery, market research, and user experience research for a variety of language interaction experiences on mobile. A pivotal period in keyboard development, because we first realize the UI is just an in-context front-end for a variety of tasks, use cases, and backend algorithms. A lot of interviews with users from a variety of use cases, e.g., form-filling for radiology or test messaging for electricians. Explored potential markets for text composition on mobile, e.g., SaaS utilities for fieldwork platforms like ServiceTitan or product search for e-commerce. Learned competitive analysis (use G2.com), business modeling (just copy someone else's), customer outreach (impossible without a network).Spent significant time exploring content creation platforms, blogging, and how those can monetize.

A self-guided education in algorithms, data structures, and statistics for natural language processing. This was completed while developing new language disambiguation algorithms for text entry. I learned about trees, tries, n-grams, cross-entropy, smoothing, string comparison metrics, API development, state management, and asynchronous code. Essential books were Manning, Jurafsky, and Yoav Goldberg. We developed in C++, Objective-C, and Swift. The result was a remarkably precise, computationally efficient (in speed and memory) algorithm for predicting intended words from tap input on a novel 10-key language UI on mobile. I learned a lot from students and grads at the University of Washington CSE department. I attended my first Assoc of Computational Linguistics conferences. Definitely swimming in the deep end.....

With a team of usually 2 or 3 interns from the University of Washington Human-Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE), we explored novel interactions to make text entry easier on mobile. Our tools were Figma, Swift, and Objective-C. Key knowledge came from the books: UX Strategy (Jaime Levy), Microinteractions (Dan Saffer), and Display & Interface Designer, Ch 2 (Bennett & Flach). At the same time, I bootstrapped in the field of UX research by learning from the UW HCDE interns.Alongside UX design and research, I committed all the usual rookie startup founder mistakes. Mastered techniques like MVP, value prop, and customer discovery. Key books were by Steve Blank, Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, Peter Thiel, Geoffrey Moore.The outcome of this work a lot of very bad usability study research results (I still have the reports), but also a lot of valuable experience.

Enjoying the High Plains from Oklahoma to N Dakota. On a harvesting crew cutting wheat, sunflowers, corn, and soybeans. 18-speed trucks, 100,000+ lb loads, and windswept, desolate landscapes. So fun!

Engineer electrical power distribution and circuit protection systems for industrial applications. Circuits for low and medium voltage electrical systems that include switchgear, motor control centers, and variable frequency drives. Size circuit breakers and conductors. Design lighting circuits and grounding systems. Perform hazardous area classification studies. Complete site-wide power analysis studies.

Draft new patent applications in electrical and computer engineering. Write arguments and responses to USPTO office actions. Interview client engineers to understand invention disclosures and assess patentability.

Relocated from New York State to Seattle. Shifted career field from electrical engineering to patent law. Studied for and passed the US Patent Office bar exam and the Washington State Professional Engineer's Licensing exam.

Diagnostics engineer on research team developing electrode architectures for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. I developed new electrical diagnostic tests to characterize performance and durability of cell architectures. Became skilled in electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for PEM fuel cells. Additional experience engineering and troubleshooting fuel cell test systems at scale.Co-author on 4 or 5 Electrochemical Society publicationsCo-inventor (and often lead inventor) on 5 or 6 PEM fuel cell patents

Process engineer for printed thick film circuit manufacturing lines in rural Norway, then rural Ireland. Both are beautiful places. I became fairly fluent in a local dialect of Norwegian. I miss Roros a lot!

Materials process engineering for custom radio frequency (RF) microelectronic circuits used in communication satellites.

Process engineering for RF filters used in first cellular phone and pager applications.