Clifford Y Bakalian

Hello

I am currently an instructor at the University of Maryland. I obtained my master's degree in computer science in May 2021. Before that, my bachelors of science in computer science and my bachelors of arts in philosophy in May 2020. My studies in CS have ranged from artificial intelligence to network security to compiler construction. My studies in philosophy have been focused in ethics, value theory and epistemology. Feel free to poke around my website. If you want to reach out I can be contacted at cliffbakalian@gmail.com

Additionally, I have some side projects including simple robitics and coding which I stream on occasion on Twitch

Instruction

Here is a brief overview of notable instructor positions I have held. See more.

Instructor: I co-teach a course at the University of Maryland called "A Tour of Programming Languages." The course covers various programming paradigms. Topics range from stack based languages to logic programming to esoteric languages.

Graduate Teaching Assistant: I lead 80 minute recitation sessions for an intro class taught in Java. I cover topics like introductory data structures and object oriented programming. I also help write and design projects, discussions, and exams.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant: I led 50 minute recitations for two classes: Discrete Structures and Organization of Programming Languages. I cover topics such as logic, proofs, reasoning, and PL design features.

Projects

I will stream some projects on Twitch. Here is an overview of current projects. See more.

Fog: a client side encryption service for cloud syncing purposes. GitHub

IoT Arm: An old robotic arm kit which I am adding a microcontroller to.

MIDI Light controller: A Midi keyboard to control light shows GitHub

Servers: I have a few servers where I host my own git repos, files and this website.

Research

From November 2018 to December 2019 I worked in Don Perlis's ALMECOM Lab working with active logic and self reasoning in Robots. Live and Learn, Ask and Tell; Agents Over Tasks was accepted at IWSDS 2019.

From May of 2019 to May 2020, I worked in Hanan Samet's lab where I worked on an iOS version of his NewsStand system.

Course Work

I have taken a wide variety of computer science courses during my undergraduate career and a few during my graduate career. My most recent classes are shown here. See more.

Decison Making for Robots: Built cheap autonomous robots to map out areas. See this paper for an overview with it's corresponding github.

Wireless and Mobile Systems for the IoT: Designed a protocl for acoustic indoor localization See this paper for an overview with it's corresponding github.

Papers

Here are some papers I have written for classes or my personal musings
Transformative Experiences: Paper based on L. A Paul's book.

Diversity and Disagreement Paper for Wisdom of Crowds.

What exactly is chance? Paper for Wisdom of Crowds.

Are we born with a sense of right and wrong? Essay for Innate Knowledge

Sexual Orientation is such an odd idea Paper for Ethics of Sex.

Course Work

I have taken and enjoyed every philosophy course I have ever taken. Here is an overview of classes I especially enjoyed. See more.

Causation, Chance, and Law: What is causation? What does it mean for A to cause B? What exactly is Chance? What makes something a law? Can we ever be sure of laws?

Wisdom of Crowds: Why do groups of people converge on certain ideas? Why do groups disagree? Why is there polarization?

Innate Knowledge: How do you know you know something? More importantly, how do you know you don't know something? Are we born knowing things?

Comparison, Conflict and Change: We all have values. We all have things we think are important. How do we compare incomparable values? What happens when we have 2 conflicting values? How do we deal with changes in our values system?

Know Thyself, Wisdom through Cognitive Science: What internal biases do I have? What factors influence my decision making? How can I prevent external influences?