About Me

Welcome!

My name is Nick Roberson, and I am a fourth year Computer Science major at Grinnell College in Iowa. Here you can find information about where I’m from, what I like to do, and what I’ve done in the past. Enjoy!

Upon leaving Northern Virginia to head to the Midwest for college I had no intentions of majoring in Computer Science. In fact, I wanted to do double major a Music/Physics. I had played the trumpet my entire life and had a string of really enjoyable physics classes in high school. Music and Physics seemed like a natural path for me, so I thought I had everything figured out. However, after taking CSC 151 and 161 (the intro sequence at Grinnell) my first year, I realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong. I found myself a new advisor, added Computer Science as my major, and since then, experienced some pretty sweet opportunities.

In the summer of 2016, just after my second year, I accepted an internship at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA in their Speech Technology and Research lab (S.T.A.R. Lab). I was very fortunate to work alongside renowned engineers on a web based application that would help native speakers of endangered languages aid speech recognition software in learning/recognizing their languages. It was my duty to retrofit the front and back end code of the application with newer technologies in order to bring it up to date with industry standards. This required me to rewrite the front-end code using Angular JS, Twitter Bootstrap, and HTML5. For the back-end I used Python, since the server was running on Flask.

Shortly after my time at SRI, in the fall of that same year, I said goodbye to Iowa and left to study abroad in Budapest, Hungary at The Aquincum Institute for Technology Computer Science and Math program. It was during these months that I met inspirational professors and students while I attended classes in Integer/Linear Programming, Graph Theory, as well as Android mobile development, piquing my interest in all three fields.

After returning, I made the decision to stay in Iowa over the summer of 2017 to work as a research and software development intern for the Grinnell College Computer Science Department doing research in the realm of Molecular Computing. Alongside fellow interns and my advisor, Titus Klinge, it was my job to help prove the robustness of certain design patterns for chemical reaction networks (CRNs). In addition, I helped build the first CRN IDE, titled Caldron, intended for the modular development of CRNs, which in 2009 were proven to be Turing universal. Caldron separates itself from other CRN software out there, such as MATLAB SimBiology, because (1) it's main purpose is to help people modularly develop, rather than analyze, CRNs and (2) it is cross platform, open source, and free. In developing Caldron I gained valuable knowledge about design patterns, multi-threading, and UI/UX design. In order to create Caldron we used JavaFX in collaboration with Gluon Scene Builder.

Currently we are finalizing Caldron and drafting a paper to submit to BIOSTEC 2018 in Funchal, Madeira - Portugal so we can go and give a talk on our work. Due to this, Caldron is still in Alpha, with Beta expected late September 2017, so it is not yet ready to be released to the public. Once it is in Beta, I will post a link to an executable below in the project description. If you use it and like it, I would love some feedback. Do not hesitate to send me an email at my email address listed below with your thoughts.

Extracirricular Interests

There are many things I find myself getting interested in, some academic and some not, but I had to narrow it down. So here are three of my biggest extracirricular time sinks.

Film Photography

One of the reasons that I like film so much is that, unlike taking photos with my iPhone, every single shot requires more thought. The aperture, focus, shutter speed, and zoom must be adjusted every time to get it just right. This allows you to alter the color and lighting of every photo. This, on top of the general feel and look of film photographs, gives each photo I take an almost nostalgic look, adding an emotional layer to it that may be lost in digital photographs.

I currently have three cameras, a Pentax K1000, Olympus OM10, and Minolta MAXXUM 7000, and am looking to expand my collection in the future to different makes and models.

Check out some of my photos right below!

Swimming & Water Polo

This year marks the 14th year that I have been swimming competitively. I began swimming in the summers at my local pool when I was 8 and have progressed over the years through different teams to where I am now, a senior in college and the captain of the Grinnell College varsity swim and water polo teams.

To say that swimming has not played a formative role in who I am today would be an outright lie. Whether it was waking up at 3:50AM 4-to-5 times a week for morning practice or leading my team to multiple state championships, swimming has taught me discipline, leadership, and confidence. In addition to these lessons, some of the best friends I have I owe entirely to swimming. It is a sport that brings people together. Whether it be tiring and intense distance sets or training-trip-two-a-days, mutual suffering in the form of athletics has proven to be a fantastic bonding experience.

So while my future in swimming may be hazy, as I am not sure what to do with it after graduation, I felt that it had to be included given its impact on me as a person and its importance in my life thus far.

Music

I really find it hard to hone in on one type of music that interests me. What I wake up each day and want to listen to can vary more than the weather. I have gone from one-day listening to bluegrass, to US Top 50 on the next, to early 2000’s Australian rap on the day after that. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to the music I may be interested in on any given day. What I do know, however, is that I can attribute the foundations of my taste in music to my dad. Throughout my entire childhood he was constantly introducing me to new music and expanding my horizons, playing anything from Jazz, to Rock, to Rap. By the time I was 11, I must have heard it all.

Earlier this summer I had the thought to combine my interests in music, art, and computer science and start a side project. This inspiration took the form of a website that I am currently developing using the Spotify API and the data visualization library D3.js. Its purpose is to allow Spotify users to visualize the music that they listen to as well as explore new music. The visualizations are done using graphs and charts created using data grabbed from your account such as top songs, playlists, and artists. I’m a long way from finishing, but it has been a really enjoyable project to work on and I have learned a lot along the way.

I’m also really interested in producing music, just for fun, but there are only so many hours in the day!

Projects

Spotify User Visualization

A webpage designed to allow Spotify users to explore music visually. Built using the Spotify API, D3.js, Node.js, Javascript, HTML 5, and Bootstrap/CSS. This site is still under development (and taking a back seat to jobs and school), Link to GitHub repo.

Caldron: An IDE for Modularly Developing Chemical Reaction Networks

Over this past summer (2017) my teammates and I built an integrated development environment (IDE) for modular chemical reaction network (CRNs) development called Caldron. Unlike existing tools that are simulations tools, Caldron is first to help developers and researchers develop and program CRNs in Caldron. Caldron supports I/O CRNs, extension operators, and closed sub-CRNs in addition to common features found in existing CRN tools. For example, users can divide a CRN into independent modules, test them separately, and reuse them in other CRNs. Furthermore, users can mark species as inputs and specify them with common elementary functions, by drawing a function, or by connecting them to another CRN. Many commonly used CRNs and extension operators are also included as libraries in Caldron.

Currently, Caldron is still not ready to be released to the public, as we are very focused on making Caldron accessible to everyone using any platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux). We believe accessibility is important to lower the bar of entry to using CRNs as a programming language so that more students and researchers can develop modular CRNs. Finally, we will polish Caldron so that it is easy to use and intuitive.

Resume

You can either view in page or download my Resume onto your computer.

Contact

If you have any questions or requests please do not hesitate to reach out and shoot me an email. I will do my best to respond as soon as I can to any and all communications that come my way.

GitHub: | LinkedIn: | Email:

Nicholas Roberson