Professional Experience ...

pro·fes·sion·al
adjective
1.
of, relating to, or connected with a profession.
"young professional people"

2.
(of a person) engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
"a professional boxer"

noun
1.
a person engaged or qualified in a profession.
"professionals such as lawyers and surveyors"


Prelude:
I did some pretty neat stuff before taking the entrepreneurial plunge (and some after), this is what I got myself into:

2014 to Present: Imagine One, LTD, Charleston, SC,

  • Artificial Intelligence Engineer - Responsible for injecting Artificial Intelligence technologies into existing projects under the Department of Defense umbrella in nearly any required form. My responsibilities are to explore a wide variety of suitable AI technologies and find ways to inject them to the array of projects in order to make them smart.

  • I'm also responsible for the creation, and up keep of the AI Repository - a library of all things AI in the organization which Technical and Business leaders go to when the need arises for information in the AI field.

  • I'm responsible for the development of the AI portion of client projects from start to finish as well as interfacing with clients in the business sense to determine high level AI needs, etc.

  • Areas of inquiry: Artificial Intelligence: Ontologies, Protege, Neo4J, Jade, Drools, Genetic Algorithms, Intelligent Agents, Prolog, Lisp, Neural Networks, Expert Systems, Natural Language Processing, Automated Planning, Machine Learning, Big Data: Hadoop-Mahout-Tika, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Swarm Theory, Steering Behaviors of Autonomous Agents, Weka.

  • I hold a Federal Security Clearance of: "Secret".

Notes:
This job is one where I get the rare opportunity to engage the fulness of my lifelong intellectual passions and manifest them in reality. For me, this isn't a profession, it's a passion that I just so happen to get paid for. There are no 8-5 work days here - what there is ... is not enough time in the day to explore all of the things that move me to excitement.

1993 - 1994 DCPM Corp, Chicago IL,

  • Chief Information Officer - Responsible for corporate mission critical computer systems, LAN and strategic IT initiatives for a small dental Insurance Company.

Notes:
I learned what it was like to be the individual with whom rests the entire responsibility of a corporate IT support mechanism. There are periods of time in a persons professional life which make them mature, this one was mine.

1990 - 1993 CNA Insurance Company, Chicago IL

  • AI Programmer / Researcher - Programming responsibility for a large insurance claims adjudication Expert System. Spearheaded the research and development of a Neural Network projects to aide in the detection of workers compensation fraud. Findings subsequently published in AI Expert, April 1995.

Notes:
My intellectual science passion is, and always will be Artificial Intelligence. I *loved* working with AI and applying it to business in interesting ways. The expert system we worked on held it's own challenges and rewards (aka 300,000 lines of LISP), but the Neural Networks project was a true privilege to spearhead. I valued every moment of it.


1987 -1990 DePaul University, Chicago IL,

  • Lab Supervisor for ACS – Management responsibility for staffing, scheduling, and maintenance for all Micro, Mac and Terminal Labs at the LPC, LOOP, Oak Brook, and O’Hare Campuses. Maintained a staff of 80 to 100 employees.

Notes:
I learned a great deal of management skills cutting my teeth on a staff of 100 employees. It was a great experience that really outfitted me with people skills, and the confidence to handle the human capital aspect of business. This experience is also what helped pay for graduate school.