Strad Slater

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About Me

My name is Strad! I am a senior at the University of Southern California studying Applied and Computational Mathematics. My interests include NLP, ML, AI, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Math, Nanotechnology, Politics, Ethics, Physics, Singing, Movies, Calisthenics, Rock Climbing and more!

Email: Stradslater12345@gmail.com

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Prediction Model for Phrase Importance in the Sentiment Analysis of News Articles

A logistic regression model used to predict the importance of a word/phrase to the classified sentiment of a sentence from a news article.

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Rationtalk - Objective News Summarization

A more objective news summarization model that pulls from facts consistent across multiple news sources.

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Email Organizer Using Naive Bayes

A email organizer that filters for job related emails using Naive Bayes.

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Thyriod Abnormality Classification Model with Logistic Regression

A logistic regression model used to classify between healthy and abnormal thyriod behavior such as hyperthyroidism.

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Critical Temperature Prediction of Possible Superconductors Using Linear Regression

A linear regression model used to predict the critical temeperature of a material to aid in superconductor discovery.

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Genome Wide Association Study Analysis on Anxiety and Intelligence

A GWAS on genes related to anxiety, OCD, PTSD and intelligence and creativity to test a hypothesis on a possible genetic link between the two types of traits.

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Effect of Weather on the Daily Revenue from Lyft's Bay Wheels Program

An analysis of how weather effects the Lyfts Bay Wheels program's profits and amount of rides per day.

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Government Response to Protest Prediction Model

An analysis of government responses to protest over the last 3 decades. A prediction model was made using n-nearest neighbors to predict the government's response.

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Philosophy Book Reccomender

A model used to recommend philosophy books based on books with a similar description and genre.

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Investigation on the Effect of Photo Dose Parameters on Mechanical Properties of Photopolymer Resin

Final research paper as a part of my 10 week research program at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Presented at NCUR.

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Time-series Observations of the Conductivity of Cable Bacteria During Long Term Incubation

Final research statement for a grant recieved to study how the conductivty of cable bacteria changes over their lifetime.

POLICY FORECASTING LAB

Machine Learning Researcher (Oct 2024 - Present)

● Creating a hierarchical multimodal neural network to predict policy decisions from various foreign actors based on public sentiment, international relations and geopolitical history.
● Developing web scrapers and leveraging APIs to collect data from diverse sources, including Reddit, the Twitter Archive, social media platforms, news outlets, government publications, and historical documents.

DOTDASH MEREDITH

Data Analyst (Oct 2024 - Present)

● Developing a regression model to predict Crossix’s target multiple metric using public health data from IQVIA
● Pulled, scraped and cleaned pharmaceutical advertising data on populations with psoriatic arthritis, diabetes, and breast cancer. Utilized NLP to cluster publications to different demographic groups based on AQ and Impact scores. Visualized insights for the clients (Olay, Cosentyx, Mounjaro, Verzenio) to further optimize advertising campaigns.

SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION AT USC

Calculus III Supplemental Instructor (Aug 2023 - Present)

● Assist up to 30 students in learning and reviewing calculus III material in order to improve test scores in the class.
● Create worksheets and hosts 3 review sessions a week to go over material learnt in class.

DOTDASH MEREDITH

Data Analyst Intern (Jun 2024 - Aug 2024)

● Pulled, scraped and cleaned pharmaceutical advertising data on populations with psoriatic arthritis, diabetes, and breast cancer; Used natural language processing to topic cluster articles based on their audience quality and impact scores.
● Insights were used to give the clients (Cosentyx, Mounjaro, Verzenio) valuable data on their target audience to further optimize advertising campaigns.

THE SMITH LAB AT USC

Bioinformatics Research Assistant (Jan 2024 - May 2024)

● Created a C++ program using recursion to find the Hamming Neighborhood of a variable length genetic sequence.
● Detected error in bisulfate FASTQ sequence mapping program, Abismal.

RAPID PROTOTYPING CENTER AT MSOE

3D Printing Researcher (May 2023 - Aug 2023)

● Found optimal levels of photonic parameters on a new resin 3D printer for mechanical strength of printed products; findings can be used to optimize for mechanical strength and price of printing.
● Collected data using a tensile strength machine and durometer; Tested for statistical significance of the data using Excel; Visualized data in Excel.

NANOBIO LAB AT USC

Biophysics Research Assistant (Aug 2022 - May 2023)

● Found that cutting edge conductive cable bacteria are only conductive for a short period of their lifetime which supported the idea that a significant amount of batches will be needed for academic and industrial research.
● Analyzed data collected from light microscopes and voltmeters; Harvested Cable Bacteria using soil packing and storing; Data visualization of the findings was done using Excel.

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Gene Editing: Technical Overview

A large technical overview of gene editing, how the technology works and its societal implications.

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The Obligation to Share One’s Genetic Information

An ethical paper arguing for the obligation for one to contribute their genetic information to a global genetic data bank.

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Therapy-based Chatbot: The Savior of the Mental Health Crisis

A description of how recurrent neural networks work for chatbots along with their application in the mental healthcare space. Published in USC's Illumin magazine.

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A Review of Recent Advances in the Field of DNA Origami-Based Drug Delivery Methods

A literature review of recent methods for DNA origami-based drug delivery technologies. 7 different methods are discussed ranging from devices with logic to programmable structures.

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Learning the Language of DNA

A short article on the genetic code and our ability to use it as a language to alter biomaterial.

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A Summary of “Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life” by Richard A. L. Jones

A lengthy summary of a book arguing for the use of molecular biology to create atomically precised machines.

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The Power of Quantum Simulations

A deep dive into simulations using quantum computers. The basics of quantum computing along with its applications are discussed.

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Auroporis: The Trojan Horse of Cancer Treatment

An idea for a moonshot company, Auroporis, that utilizes plasmonics to create gold nanoparticles that target cancer cells.

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Holding a Single Atom

A review of my talk with Dr. Mikkel Anderson on his lab's ability to isolate and "hold" single atoms.

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Creating a Facial Emotion Recognizer Line by Line

A line by line tutorial of how to create a facial emotion recognizer using pytorch.

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How to Detect Lies with a Machine and Microexpressions

A deep dive into how microexpressions could be detected using AI along with recent advances in the field.

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Self-Assembly of Nanocrystal Superlattices

A summary of a paper on the self-assembly of nanocrystal superlattices.

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The Aliens are here — and They Want our Morals

A discussion on the future of AI and AI ethics.

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Making Room at the Bottom

An exploration into the idea of "atomically precise manufacurting," the ability to manufacutre products atom by atom.