About
I'm Darius, a computer science student at EPFL currently working on CoT reasoning and dataset optimization for llms. I'm documenting my learning notes and thoughts in this barely populated blog: dariusfoodeei.com.
I like to think about the future and build things. I'll also be documenting some projects I work on here! Some of my interests include:
- Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning These are fields I find very exciting. I believe the future of real world AI applied to industry and society will be game changing (some cool companies working on this include phaidra.ai and others) and I also think the economic impacts of self improving control systems in industry will be huge. I also think AGI will require a lot more than just scaling LLMs to become more autonomous and creative. "There are many problems in the world that are far too complex to hand-code solutions for. I expect this to be a large branch of machine learning, and an important step on the road towards general intelligence." - Sam Altman (I don't agree on keeping ai researched closed though)
- Decentralized Systems and Ethereum I've worked on this for a few years now and I think it's a very interesting technology with huge potential, if you are a fan of finance and code this space is for you. There's nothing quite like it.
- Robotics I think humanoid robotics will be the next big thing to solve the labor shortages in the world. I've worked personally on a few smaller projects like quadrupeds and robotic arms but nothing close to terminators.
- Brain Computer Interfaces (here's a link to a cool intro) I'm not a neuroscientist but I believe BCI is a game changer for people with disabilities and will help us keep up with AGI and superintelligence once they become a reality.
In my past life, I cofounded a decentralized money market protocol called Honey. I've worked for Trader Joe and Gelato Network. I've dabbled in Web3 and decentralized systems for a few years as a developer after getting roped in by friends during my bachelor's and falling in love with the community and ecosystem, I think blockchains have a huge potential in finance and I own some bitcoin.
I've also done some work in high school in astrophysics. Here is a link to a paper I wrote on gravitational lensing and dark matter.
Some articles and blogs I think everyone should read :
Current Work
I'm currently diving deep into deep learning (no pun intended) and reinforcement learning (if you want to as well I recommend this book as well as Sutton and Barto's book).
I'm also working on an app called memo that gamifies the process of reading saved articles and threads (inspired by duolingo).
I've built a multiclass classification model that can give pretty accurate predictions on skin lesions. You can find the code on github.
At EPFL I am currently working on a research project with the MLO lab which consists in the creation of a state of the art truly open source llm (dataset and pretraining pipelines as well, hi meta lol)
Culture
I like music (a lot), here are some of my favorite artists:
- Black Sabbath
- AC/DC
- Drake
- The Doors
- Led Zeppelin
- The Beatles
- The Rolling Stones
- Jimi Hendrix
Here is a link to my spotify profile. I take great pride in my playlists.
I also like the gym and running. I've ran a couple 10k and I'm planning to do a half marathon in october 2024. I like motorcycles (harleys) and cars (f1 fan).
I use a 2021 M1 pro macbook pro as my main computer. If you want to buy a computer buy a mac. I hate windows (I've used windows for over 15 years and would never go back after moving to macos). Linux is cool too if you like to code. Just don't buy a windows.
Contact
You can reach me at darius.foodeei@epfl.ch for anything academic and otherwise here is my personal email: darius.foodei@gmail.com