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Wyatt Makedonski

Mission

I have committed my life to improving the world. This is not a light commitment or something I am saying to virtue signal. I mean it. I am doing this through my work in the energy field as that field is the single most important field in the battle against climate change (likely the biggest challenge facing humanity). I have founded multiple companies in energy (including my current company), have written multiple research papers to progress the field, and create educational content to attract more people to the field.

Table of Contents

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Introduction

I began working in software engineering in 2014, I have been working in energy since 2016, and I have been working in AI (specifically machine learning) since 2017. Working in energy led me to my work in AI as the technology is capable of solving many problems and creating a lot of value in the world. I apply AI to the energy field.

I used to work for large corporations including a big tech company, but I made the conscious decision to take a different path in life. I choose to work in what I think is the most impactful field in the world. With that, I choose to work in situations where I can make a large impact building meaningful products. I can do this at small companies (startups) instead of at large corporations with tens of thousands of employees where people are generally limited to making bug fixes, doing iterations of small A/B tests, and making internal tooling. I made this decision in 2016 and I intend to stick with it for the rest of my life.

AI

I have built two state of the art machine learning (ML) systems (meaning that they are the single best performing system in the world at their task) at both Gradient Energy and Yize NRG (both using deep reinforcement learning). I have built another production ML system with superhuman performance on its task (natural language processing) while at IEEE GlobalSpec. I have built another high-performing production ML system (computer vision) at HiroFit. For that product, there were no published benchmarks for state of the art or human performance (the task was not suited to be compared one-to-one to human performance) so I cannot make a claim that it exceeded their performance, but it was a pioneering system in the field with subjectively higher performance and more features than other systems, and, most importantly, it made our users very happy.

I’ll Be Honest

I am not known for my lack of weakness, I have many weaknesses. I have a narrow set of strengths and skills that I try to apply to create value. I try my best to be aware of my gaps and avoid commenting and acting on matters in those areas; I prefer to defer to someone better at those areas. Even in areas where I am relatively strong, I still have much to learn and improve.

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Work Highlights

Work Highlights

Research and Publications

I try to advance the world by releasing knowledge completely open source in addition to my work. I enjoy research, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Research

Writings

I share my thoughts on various topics, usually technical, here on my website, among other places.

Writings

Educational Materials

I write and present, among other things, to teach people about the energy field to try and bring them into the field. I have contributed to publications on behalf of and presented to groups within the energy industry group DER Task Force, and contribute to the educational group inDERmediate.

Education

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

B.S. Computer Science 2013-2017

Troy, New York

RPI

Cedar Falls High School

Cedar Falls, Iowa 2010–2013

Personal

Theta Xi Fraternity (aka “Zoo”)

Brother, Alpha chapter. Initiated 2014.

Favorite Books

Favorite Music

Here are some of my favorite genres and bands. I sing and do vocals in my free time, and I enjoy covering a lot of them.

The Black Crown by Suicide Silence

Other

I’ve lived in over a dozen cities across several states. New York, New York has been my favorite.

Contact

wyatt@gradient.energy

Twitter

GitHub

LinkedIn

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