Robert Utterback Email & Phone Number

Monmouth, Il, Us

Monmouth, Il, Us

Monmouth, Illinois, United States

- Teach a wide variety of courses, from intro programing to operating systems to machine learning. Despite the wide variety (19 distinct courses) and heavy teaching load, these courses receive great course evaluations scores.- Perform system administration tasks on department servers- Create and manage cloud (AWS) databases for student projects- Co-designed a brand new data science program, as well as a new introductory CS curriculum.- Participate in recruitment efforts that have successfully maintained our numbers despite demographic shifts and challenges due to COVID-19.- Advise, mentor, and perform research with students, fostering academic curiosity and innovation.- Serve on faculty committees, contributing to effective governance of the college.- Recognized for academic and professional achievements with tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in April 2023.- Extended graduate research in parallel programming, designing two theoretical methods for detecting determinacy races in parallel programs that use futures and implementing one in a practical research prototype runtime system.- As part of an invitation to a “best papers” collection, developed an alternative record-and-replay system that, while impractical itself, demonstrated the superiority of the PORRIDGE (below) system for fork-join programs that use critical sections.- Apply machine learning and text analytics to foreign news datasets, with a focus on clustering and topic modeling. Collaborate with domain experts to produce scholarly publications and governmental research reports.- Lead the development of a web-based dashboard allowing users to upload, explore, and analyze their own text datasets, with an focus on clustering and topic modeling. The UI is built with Svelte and SvelteKit, backed by a Python-based infrastructure utilizing MongoDB, celery, scikit-learn, spacy, and many other ML/NLP libraries.

Monmouth, Illinois, United States

Teach a wide variety of computer science and data science courses, perform research with undergraduates, advise students, and serve on faculty committees.I co-designed a new data science program and a new introductory CS curriculum.

- Data Science Bootcamp Instructor: Designed core portfolio projects, edited curriculum, and led instructional sessions based on Microsoft data science curriculum and technologies, equipping beginners with skills and knowledge in Excel, Power BI, Python, Azure, and machine learning.- High-Performance Simulation Developer: Developed a high-performance particle simulation using C++ and CUDA, employing the discrete element method and a unique collision-detection system using multiple grids in GPU memory. This system efficiently simulates granular particle processing for mining applications.- Inherited, redesigned, and enhanced a bespoke business dashboard with Flask and Python, involving significant ETL processes and custom report parsing. Ongoing development, maintenance, and feature additions continue to enhance client decision-making through data visualization and analytics.- Financial Reinforcement Learning Project Consultant: Improved the development cycle of a financial reinforcement learning research project by integrating Google Colab, Google Drive, and Github. Provided expert guidance on Python programming and effective use of the Gymnasium reinforcement learning library.- Technical Editor: Served as the technical editor for the book “Python QuickStart Guide” by Robert Oliver (ClydeBank Media), ensuring technical accuracy, clarity, and relevance.- Educational Content Creator: Developed programming project packs for Python, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS for ClydeBank Media, pairing with their books. These projects guide beginners through gradually building a portfolio, featuring full instructions, detailed solutions, and video walkthroughs.

I work on finding new ways to apply machine learning and data science to text analysis, in particular assessing strategic narratives and their convergence or divergence. From the MESA Group's website:"The Media Ecology and Strategic Analysis (MESA) Group is an interdisciplinary group with a broad mission to address the rising need for strategic narrative assessment as a tool for promoting cooperative assistance and creating community power."

St Louis, Missouri, United States

Research in parallel computing, algorithms and scheduling, focusing on modifications to work-stealing schedulers, especially for the purposes of detecting bugs. I developed 5 runtime systems in C/C++ to evaluate our algorithms.

Santa Clara, California

Developed a custom parser to extend C with an actor-model syntax. Applied this an existing distributed job execution platform to reduce LoC and complexity.

Kansas City, Missouri

Automated testing, unit testing, continuous integration, and C# development on the hospital pharmacy application.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science, 3.95

Dissertation: Easier Parallel Programming with Provably-Efficient Runtime Schedulers

Bs, Computer Science, Mathematics, 4.0

Activities and Societies: Phi Kappa Tau, Phi Sigma Pi

4.0

High school dual-credit classes, Summer classes while at Truman

Study Abroad, 4.0

Study abroad experience in New Zealand.