My name is Steve Bottos. I hold two formal degrees, a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering respectively, and a growing list of minor certifications (most recently Amazon’s AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certificate – with plans to also become certified with Microsoft Azure in the near future). I currently hold the title of Machine Learning Engineer at Qimia Inc., in San Diego California.
It was in 2014 – mid way through my undergraduate degree – that I fell in love with programming at first sight, during a MATLAB class of all things. That same year, I decided to begin learning Python and self-teaching some core computer science fundamentals. What began as a hobby grew into a passion that spurred me to return to school in 2017, after working for a year as a Mechanical Design Engineer. I knew at this time that I wanted to make a living in the software industry – specifically in the world of Machine Learning and Data Science. I was, and still am, hooked on programming. The ability to create, develop, solve problems, and turn ideas into tangible working objects is incredibly satisfying. As a naturally creative and somewhat artistic person there is no better career. By September of 2019 I had completed my Master’s degree with a focus on Signal Processing and Machine Learning, authoring my thesis titled “Statistical Methods to Measure Reading Progression Using Eye-Gaze Fixation Points” as well as three published papers on related subjects (one of which is published in IEEE’s Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement journal).