Previously, I was a Research Engineer at DawnLight, a Sequoia Capital-backed Silicon Valley startup founded by a few Stanford Professors. We researched, designed, and built state-of-the-art human-centric Ambient Intelligence and Edge Computing technologies for facilitating better health outcomes and improving patient experience across the United States. I worked alongside Drs. Nathan Liu, Erheng Zhong, and S. R. Prakash.

I also worked as an Artificial Intelligence Researcher at Mayo Clinic, where I first-authored several papers published in the leading Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical Informatics conferences and journals, including ACM-BCB and JAMIA. My mentors were Dr. Feichen Shen and Dr. Yanshan Wang from the division of Dr. Hongfang Liu. The Mayo story is summarized by this Luther Magazine article.

I hold Bachelor's Degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from Luther College, a small liberal arts college located in picturesque Decorah, IA. During my time at the college, I did collaborative and individual research in Topology, Automated Unit Testing, Artificial Intelligence and Authorship Attribution, and Programming Languages and Type Theory. I have also co-authored two papers under Luther affiliation, one at Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS) and the other one at Health Data Science (HDS). As the final Computer Science project, my team and I have built Luther Navigator, a project that seeks to provide students a way to share their experiences abroad. The backstory of the project is briefly talked about in this article.

Prior to college, I was a college dropout (I dropped out from a Georgian college and eventually obtained my bachelor's degrees from the US college) and worked as a Salesman and Marketing Coordinator at Insta, a reputable Electrical Engineering, Smart Home, and Automation company headquartered in Tbilisi, Georgia. I have also co-founded a startup, had another startup project, and did some graphic design freelancing work.

While in high school, I competed in national mathematics Olympiad of Georgia and am a multiple-time finalist. I was also an IMO and IPhO nominee for the national team of Georgia. Though, I focused more on general education and never really dedicated a lot of time to math or physics. This has ultimately earned me a gold medal for academic excellence, which is granted to a handful of graduates in the country, but likely cost me international competition medals in math and physics.

Before all that, I was a die hard street soccer player and fan.