Sam Castillo Email & Phone Number

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States

Responsible for maintaining, optimizing, and modernizing SIEM ingestion pipelines with the Cyber Enhancements group within the Cybersecurity Division at Oak Ridge National Labs.This position is part of a joint venture among contractors to fill technical roles at ORNL - I'm glad to join the lab through my contract with Cadre5.

Knoxville, Tennessee, United States

I participated in the Springboard Data Science Fellowship with a concentration in Advanced Machine Learning. The academic portion of the program totaled about 600 hours of coursework, projects, and detailed reports over an 8 month span. I completed multiple end-to-end machine learning projects and sharpened my skills in Python, SQL, Bash, Tableau, GCP, and the entire data science life cycle. My specialization gave me further experience in deep learning, NLP, and cloud computing.Throughout the fellowship, I worked under the direct supervision of an independent data science industry expert with several years of experience in the field. A quick overview of achievements:- Defined and conducted 6+ ML/analytics projects involving NLP, cloud frameworks, boosting models, and neural networks.- Extracted, wrangled, and validated over 1M records across multiple projects from raw sources (e.g., U.S. Census Data).- Built and deployed a full-stack educational application through Streamlit relying on Docker, AWS, and MySQL backend.- Produced several dashboards in Plotly and Tableau to illustrate exploratory data analysis and feature importance.- Drafted proposals, documented coding notebooks, and delivered final product presentations for each major project.

Knoxville, Tn

I managed the FOCUS Alumni community throughout the South Area with an emphasis in Knoxville, Nashville, Atlanta, and Dallas. I invested primarily in the former full-time missionaries and student leaders who were heavily involved with FOCUS and have since transitioned into new careers or family developments. Day-to-day responsibilities included organizing alumni data, developing and executing city strategies, coaching alumni on an individual and group basis, managing key city projects and initiatives, and creating formative content to meet the needs of alumni across the country. Like any good data guy, I also had my fair share of ad hoc analysis and viz experience.A few achievements:- Leveraged CRM database of 63k alumni to optimize lead funnels, revitalize branding, and redefine long-term core SOPs. - Wrangled and validated raw, unstructured constituent data in Python for further CRM analysis and visualization.- Conducted Python analysis of city-wide survey data and built interactive geospatial dashboard to inform strategic action.- Developed, tracked, and defended long-term project budgets and OKRs for initiatives in 8 cities across the US.- Managed community development teams in Dallas and Nashville to broaden departmental impact by 500+ connections.

Ave Maria, Fl | Oklahoma City, Ok | Beaver Creek, Co

Seasonally appointed as Production Lead or Specialist to facilitate AV setup and execution for various live events.A few achievements:- Orchestrated 100+ complex live events and training sessions for FOCUS's top-tier missionary development program. - Organized and executed production-quality staging, audio mixing, and visual aesthetics for regional SEEK conference.- Effectively collaborated with multiple AV teams to provide advanced on-site support and resolve technical difficulties.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States

Served as a primary leader in the university ministry context on a core team of four missionaries. Our goal was to establish a foundational, sustainable longitudinal mentorship program that would outlast our service for years to come.Given my tech expertise, I did a good bit of analysis on the side to track organizational metrics and financial projections/stakeholder strategies.A few achievements:- Utilized CRM analytics and visualizations to build $200k+ in funding streams sourced from 70+ key financial stakeholders.- Developed 100+ custom engagement plans based on target-audience KPIs to drive long-term organizational growth.- Crafted and delivered 300+ unique lectures and presentations to launch 200% increase in active mentorship program.

Knoxville, Tennessee, United States

Served on an incredible Board of Directors to manage public relations, fundraising campaigns, and marketing initiatives for a local nonprofit startup. A few achievements I share with the other members of the board:- Applied principles of business analytics to generate $400k in fundraised revenue for a local nonprofit startup.- Designed campaigns, strategic financial plans, and marketing SOPs in Excel based on patterns in CRM data.- Redesigned and maintained website based on Squarespace traffic analytics to boost engagement and audience awareness.

Birmingham, Alabama Area

I tutored students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham through the Vulcan Materials Academic Success Center on campus. I specialized in introductory chemistry, biology, and psychology courses.

Birmingham, Al

As a UAB TrailBlazer, my main responsibility was to give campus tours to prospective students. I also assisted with admission-centered events such as UAB Day and occasionally traveled to other cities for recruitment events. Delivered numerous presentations and successfully recruited several students to the UAB family.

Birmingham, Al

Worked as an undergraduate assistant in the lab of Dr. Dan Mirman, a specialist in Cognitive Dynamics and lesion-symptom mapping of aphasic stroke patients. Under the direction of postdoctoral mentors, I completed the following:- Orchestrated the ingestion and education of research participants in a long-term credit-based study.- Facilitated eye-tracking experiments in healthy controls to monitor neural cues based on pupil movement and dilation during various linguistic tasks. - Contributed to the greater body of knowledge concerning eye-movement as an indicator of aphasic properties or lesioned neural correlates of interest.

Birmingham, Al

Interned in the lab of Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski to process and analyze fMRI data related to human memory networks. The overall work of the lab was dedicated to build our general understanding of memory-related neural correlates in epileptic patients. Under the direction of a graduate mentor, I completed the following:- Extracted neuroimaging data from experimental fMRI trials of visual memory encoding task in healthy controls.- Compiled and co-registered functional time-series activation data to smoothed anatomical templates (6mm FWHM).- Created Generalized Linear Model to capture significant BOLD signal, accounting for noise and nuisance regressors.- Conducted group-wise analysis of GLM weights to produce visual maps of neural activity during memory encoding.- Presented findings at NeuroNEM national conference and successfully defended thesis in field of fMRI investigation.

Birmingham, Alabama, United States

I managed the production of UAB’s only peer reviewed undergraduate academic journal. This was a term-based appointment.A few achievements:- Interviewed, recruited, and managed team of 15+ board members to produce university-wide academic journal.- Oversaw all publication collection, revision, and double-blind peer review in accordance with research standards.- Implemented major overhaul of committee responsibilities complete with a new manual for future editions of the Board.

Birmingham, Alabama, United States

I coordinated the first city-wide Taste of Science festival in Birmingham with the aim of integrating academic culture with everyday conversations for the general public.A few achievements: - Recruited and managed 5 committees to organize vendors, speakers, and other logistics.- Researched and established relationships with multiple vendors and venue hosts across the city.- Successfully delivered a week's worth of festival events, drawing in 100+ new attendees overall.

Birmingham, Alabama

Worked as an undergraduate assistant in the lab of Dr. Farah Lubin at UAB, renowned for her specialized work in neuroepigenetics. Under the direction of a postdoctoral mentor Dr. Vicky Huang, I completed the following:- Treated and sliced 100+ zebrafish telencephalon specimens under cryogenic conditions to 20-micron thickness.- Utilized immunohistochemistry to analyze H3K9 methylation in neural tissue in response to stress factors.- Extracted specimen DNA and amplified via polymerase chain reaction for further analysis.

Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Admitted to a competitive team of 16 student researchers to explore novel genomic structures in bacteriophages in a year-long research program.Under the direction of our principal investigator, I completed the following:- Isolated and amplified novel Corynebacterium bacteriophage from environment via standard microbiological procedure. - Parsed and annotated 200kb viral genome via analytical comparison to known bacteriophage structural composition.- Discovered unique structural characteristics of viral tails based on unique genomic composition of amino acid lysine.- Presented findings at NCUR national conference and published annotations in national Phage Genomics database.