Writing

Spark Summer Practicum at CUA June 2, 2026
"This summer I am teaching the Spark Summer Practicum at CUA. The practicum is meant to help participants move from general familiarity with AI tools toward concrete workflows and small products that can be used in their own work...."
Training LLMs in 2026 February 16, 2026
"This is a quick note to summarize what I think are the main components of training a capable LLM in early 2026. These notes are primarily to organize my thoughts for myself. I’m putting them online in the hope that they may be useful for others...."
References for Topology and Robotics January 1, 2019
"Topology is at the core of the most successful algorithms inRobotics. To understand how these methods work, you need a basic graspof topological ideas (see Chapter 4 of LaValle’s book forexample). But ascomputational topology has advanced and computers have gotten faster,there has been an increase in interest in the ap..."
An Opinionated Tutorial on ROS Node Design September 12, 2018
"Fluency with ROS is essential for doing robotics. A lot of thestudents I’ve worked with in the past have no problem getting throughthe ROStutorials, butstart to flounder as soon as they need to create their first ROS node.My goal with this tutorial is to introduce a few techniques that makewriting ROS nodes easier. I’m..."
New Reading Group September 1, 2018
"I have a few new graduate students this semester. They’re coming inwith a solid background in AI, but they’re all working on the car sothey need to get (more) up to speed on robotics. To that end, we’regoing to be doing weekly readings related to robotics and self-drivingcars. Check out the list here..."
Hello World! January 8, 2018
"Just getting things set up…..."