pedrito maynard-zhang: a sketch
professional
i am a senior research scientist in amazon future engineer,
amazon's philanthropic initiative to help make computer science (cs) education and career pathways
available to all students, particularly those from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds.
prior to that, i was a software development engineer (sde) for about 15 years in
amazon.com and microsoft, always in areas close to artificial intelligence (ai).
prior to developing software, i taught and conducted research
as an assistant professor in the department of computer science
& systems analysis at miami
university in oxford, ohio. i've still enjoyed the occasional opportunity
to teach, e.g., courses at seattle university and amazon's machine learning university.
i received my phd in cs in 2001 from the department of computer science
at stanford university (picking
up a masters of science in cs along the way). i
did my bachelors in electrical engineering at walla walla university (then walla
walla college), a liberal arts university in southeastern
washington state.
my general technical area of expertise is artificial
intelligence with an emphasis on data science, multi-agent systems,
knowledge representation and reasoning, and machine learning. but these
days i am most excited about using research to better understand how we can make cs pathways
more equitable.
for more information, see my:
personal
i was born in michigan, usa. my parents are jamaican immigrants.
i've lived in jamaica, puerto rico, the people's republic of
china, and the states of michigan, washington, california, and ohio
here in the usa. i currently live in sammamish, washington, a satellite
city of seattle. my wife margaret and i have two adult children, jasper and
leo. i practice and teach traditional chinese martial arts; i practice
chang quan (northern longfist) and pi gua zhang under master adam hsu of
the adam hsu kung fu school.
i have also earned a black belt in
moh kempo and pai hu shih under master robert jones of the academy of kempo martial
arts. i also love traveling; i have visited israel, sweden,
norway, italy, japan, france, mexico, canada, australia, germany, and others in addition to the
countries i've lived in. i also passionately enjoy an eclectic variety
of music (from tori amos to plumb, reba mcentire to yo-yo ma, prince to metallica, and i amplify
kexp), stories (books,
movies, plays, you name it), food from around the world, stimulating
conversations, hiking/backpacking, and riding my motorcycle.
