I’m a computer science researcher at Balena based out of Englewood, New Jersey.

About Me


Picture of Micah
Elliot
Halter

I have been interested in computer science since I was six years old, and have built up an unmatched passion for the field. I have extensive experience in software development and research from internships, projects, and competitions. I graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a focus in system architecture and theory and a Masters of Science in Computer Science with a specialization in Machine learning. I am currently working as a Backend Engineer at Balena.

Work Experience


Balena

Backend Engineer • Feb 2021 - Present

  • Develop backend code for the Balena ecosystem
  • More details to come…

Georgia Tech Research Institute

Research Scientist • Jun 2019 - Feb 2021

  • Lead contributor to research projects sponsored by large entities DARPA, NIH, DOD, and ONR
  • Wrote and published peer reviewed conference and journal papers to communicate research findings to the greater research community
  • Contributed and participated in white paper and proposal writing to bring in more funding for new and on-going projects
  • Delivered applied research projects to sponsors such as source code, web applications, and technical reports

Undergraduate Research Assistant • Jan 2016 - May 2019

  • Lead contributor to research projects sponsored by large entities NIH and ONR
  • Wrote and published a peer reviewed journal paper to communicate research findings to the greater research community
  • Delivered applied research projects to sponsors such as source code, web applications, and technical reports
  • Predicting crimes in Portland, OR using temporal and geographic features derived from crime statistics and GIS data

The Boeing Company

Software Development Intern • May 2016 - Aug 2017

  • Developed a security auditing tool suite for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to maintain hardened security on classified servers
  • Developed a web application in C#, HTML, and JavaScript to view and analyze network traffic
  • Developed several system administration scripts as needed by team members to complete tasks such as emailing system logs and automatic server backups
  • Organized and led a software development team to create a minimum viable product of a Kanban board web application
  • Pitched the Kanban board prototype to management to form a team to continue development of the application after I left
  • Documented and executed an upgrade plan for the company’s identity management servers
  • Developed an Outlook-integrated conference room mapping tool in C#

Projects


AlgebraicJulia Project logo

  • A GitHub Organization for a collection of Julia packages for defining modeling frameworks as generalized algebraic theories
  • Includes Julia packages such as Catlab.jl, AlgebraicPetri.jl, and AlgebraicRelations.jl
  • A category theory approach to defining metamodeling tasks for representing, composing, selecting, and tuning scientific models
  • Research funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Petri.jl Project logo

  • A stochastic petri net modeling framework for the Julia programming language
  • Allow petri nets to be compiled to Gillespie and differential equation based simulations

VirtualEnv.jl

  • Self-contained virtual environments for the Julia programming language
  • A reimplementation of venv from Python in Julia

Corsair Database

  • Research funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR)
  • Developed a web application for viewing and analyzing sonar SAS data using Go, Python, and PostgresDB deployed with Docker and Drone.io
  • Engineered a database for managing scientific experiments to utilize the speed and efficiency of using a rigid relational database, while being flexible enough to handle the changing data requirements of scientific experimentation

Research


Funding

Dates Role Sponsor Title Amount
2020 - 2021 Task Lead DARPA Computable Models - Generalized Algebraic Theories for Enhancing Multiphysics $1.35M
2018 - 2021 Task Lead DARPA Artifical Intelligence Exploration - Automating Scientific Knowledge Extraction $1M
2019 - 2021 Performer Office of Naval Research Extracting, Explaining, and Estimating Information in Sonar Data $400K
2019 - 2021 Performer Office of Naval Research MCM Situational Awarness $375K
2018 - 2019 Performer Air Force Network Risk Indication $135K
2016 - 2019 Performer Office of Naval Research Performance Estimation of Underwater MCM Operations $990K
2015 - 2019 Performer Office of Naval Research Automation for UxV-based Mine Countermeasures $540K

Peer Reviewed Journal Publications

  • An algebraic framework for structured epidemic modelling, Sophie Libkind, Andrew Baas, Micah Halter, Evan Patterson James P. Fairbanks, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (Volume 380, Issue 2233), 2022
    Open Access

Peer Reviewed Conference Publications

  • Typed and Stratified Models with Slice Categories, Sophie Libkind, Andrew Baas, Micah Halter, Evan Patterson James P. Fairbanks, Applied Category Theory, 2022
    PDF Video Slides
  • Compositional Scientific Computing with Catlab and SemanticModels, Micah Halter, Evan Patterson, Andrew Baas, James Fairbanks, Applied Category Theory, 2020
    PDF Video
  • SemanticModels.jl: A Julia Package for Scientific Model Augmentation, Micah Halter, Sreenath Raparti, Kun Cao, Christine Herlihy, James Fairbanks, JuliaCon, 2019
    PDF Slides Video
  • A Compositional Framework for Scientific Model Augmentation, Micah Halter, Christine Herlihy, James Fairbanks, Applied Category Theory, 2019
    PDF Slides

Under Review Journal Publications

  • Accelerating Automatic Target Recognition Performance Estimation with a Relational Database for Synthetic Aperture Sonar, James Fairbanks*, Micah Halter*, Trevor Goodyear, Matthew Jackson, Brian O’Donnell, John Wilcher, Navy Journal of Underwater Research, 2018

Invited Talks

  • Compositional Epidemiological Modeling Using Structured Cospans, Micah Halter and Evan Patterson, University of California Riverside Categories Seminar, Nov 2020
    Slides Video

Posters

  • SemanticModels.jl: A Framework for Automatic Composition of Scientific Models Across Domains, Micah Halter, Kun Cao, James Fairbanks, SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing, Feb 2020
    PDF
  • Scientific Knowledge Extraction, Augmentation & Analysis, Micah Halter, James Fairbanks, Eric Davis, Clayton Morrison, Ryan Wright, DARPA Demo Day, Sep 2019

Education


Georgia Institute of Technology

Master of Science in Computer Science • Jan 2020 - May 2022

  • 4.0 GPA
  • Specialization in Machine Learning

Georgia Institute of Technology

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science • Aug 2015 - May 2019

  • Concentration in system architecture and theory
  • Dean’s List Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2019

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science • Aug 2017 - Dec 2017

  • Studied abroad

Skills


  • Full Stack Development
  • Deep Learning
  • System Administration
  • Database Design and Management
  • High Performance Computing
  • Machine Learning
  • Functional Programming
  • Category Theory
  • Languages
    • C/C++
    • Julia
    • Python
    • Go
    • Java
    • Haskell
    • Scala
    • Perl
    • Bash
    • SQL
    • MySQL
    • PostgreSQL
    • LaTeX
    • HTML
    • CSS
    • JavaScript