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Achievement: Pull Sharkx2

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Achievement: Pull Sharkx2

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TaylorOLaird/README.md

👋 Hi, I'm Taylor Laird

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, specializing in:

🚀 Redirected Locomotion 🤖 Embodied AI 🌐 Digital twins

🧑‍💻 Research & Interests:

  • XR Locomotion – Developing novel locomotion techniques to improve comfort and immersion in VR
  • Embodied AI Assistants – Building intelligent, spatially-aware AI for AR and smart home environments
  • Digital Twins & Simulation – Applying simulation frameworks for Discreet Event Simulation research and development
  • Human-AI Interaction – Exploring how AI can naturally interact within physical and virtual spaces

🧑‍🏫 Graduate Research Assistant – UCF Virtual & Augmented Reality Lab

  • Researching XR, digital twins, ML, and system simulation

🧑‍💻 Software Engineering Intern – Qualtrics

  • Developed enterprise-grade solutions for User and Access Management, allowing platform management of internal permission resources at scale
  • Collaborated in a team employing scrum framework for sprint-based continuous improvement
  • Wrote high-quality, modular, extensible code in an agile environment using modern Java, TypeScript, and React
  • Deployed rapidly with unit, integration, and snapshot testing, GitLab, Jenkins CI/CD, and Docker

🎓 Computer Science Teaching Assistant – UCF

  • Tutor various computer science topics: Object Oriented Programming and Algorithms for Machine Learning
  • Hold office hours to aid students academically, and grade computer science assignments
  • Work directly under a Raytheon PhD Principle Systems Engineer and UCF professor to foster a positive learning environment for students

🚀 Project Lead – NASA, Florida Space Institute, UCF

  • During an ongoing eight month contract through UCF’s Senior Design program, our team set up the server infrastructure for Sim-Smackdown 2022.
  • Our team set up an openVPN server and multiple AWS servers.
  • The team working to grow the UCF Lunar Base through in-house HLA federate research and development using the NASA Artemis Architecture in collaboration with the RASSOR and DON 4.0 teams in the Pitch RTI and DON software.

⚒️ Tech Stack:

  • Unity (XR Toolkit, Meta SDK, OpenXR)
  • C#, Python, TypeScript, Java, React
  • Machine Learning, Simulation Tools (salabim, HLA federates)
  • AWS, Docker, Git, Jenkins, CI/CD Pipelines

🎓 Education:

  • PhD (In Progress) Computer Science – UCF
  • M.S. Computer Science – UCF
  • B.S. Computer Science – UCF
  • A.A. Articulated Computer Science – Valencia College

📫 Let's Connect:

Pinned Loading

  1. Josephus-permutation Josephus-permutation Public

    My take on the classic “Josephus permutation” with a little bit of a twist. It uses a dynamic doubly linked list to solve it by using the node structure to mimic the physical nature of the problem.

    C 1

  2. Pi_Approximation- Pi_Approximation- Public

    My take on the classic interview question for approximating the value of pi by taking the ratio between randomly placed points on a circle cast onto a square.

    C 1