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My Bio

Robert Whetsel - is a decorated war veteran, Open Source Visionary, Entrepreneur and a Computer Scientist who has worked with technology since 1989. He is one of founders of the Open Business Foundation where he functions as a Fellow for the Executive Guidance Team; a trusted advisor and mentor for senior management. Additionally, Robert had served on the Steering Committee for the Governor's Workforce Investment Board Information Technology Cluster Initiative for the State of Maryland, and was one of the authors that crafted "Maryland’s Information Technology Industry Workforce Report and Recommendations", http://www.gwib.maryland.gov/it/itrec.pdf. When he’s not pondering difficult, unmanageable problems, preferably those involving the philosophical debate of the Singularity, he’s pursuing a Doctoral degree in Artificial Intelligence, trying to contribute to the creation of a conscious machine.

I Specialize In

Strategic planning advising/mentoring for executives, creating strategies for analytic problem solving, applied project/portfolio management, open source planning and implementation in an enterprise architecture environment, developing and maintaining an enterprise information assurance program, artificial intelligent (AI) research involving natural language interfaces, information architecture and presenting data analytics.


My Research Experience

My research interests lie in the field of Artificial Intelligence. My particular interest is in facilitating the exchange of information among machines and humans. I am interested in creating an autonomic natural language knowledge base by exploring semantic relationships on the web via machine learning. My proposed approach to semantic web learning is to develop a Multi-Dimensional Model for Knowledge Representation in which data and relationships between data are represented on multiple vectors. The intention is to expose underlying relationships that otherwise might not be apparent.


Multi-Dimensional Model for Knowledge Representation: My PhD research will be based on this preliminary research which explored the feasibility of developing a semantic model for representing data and relationship between different data on multiple vectors.

Chat Robots (Chatbots): This research explores the question, “do patterns of language differences or similarities exist between chatbot-to-human and human-to-human discourse corpora?” The approach is to use linguistic analyses to compare and identify linguistic features of a variety of human-to-human discourse (chat room “log files”), and human-to-chatbot communications (chatbot “log files”) to determine if language differences exists. This is a first step to creating a linguistic model that can be used to develop a chatbot with more human-like conversation.

Interoperability between applications and enterprise systems: Performed research and development, and determined feasibility in application design and data translation models. Research culminated in a patent application (61088209).

Intelligent Agent Architecture: Created an intelligent framework that defined relationships between data. Artificial Intelligence approaches used to define the relationships were knowledge representation, text mining, data mining, natural language processing, machine learning, information extraction, and semantic knowledge management. A major aspect of this architecture involved identifying relationships in information, intelligence and analytics of a corpora (based on a specific universe) by using statistical analysis, occurrences, validation of linguistic rules, and encryption (cypher/code) and decryption (decipher/decode).

Autonomic Verification of Knowledge Bases: Developed an intelligent knowledge management system to continuously acquire, filter, organize and reuse a knowledge base. Used text mining, data mining, natural language processing, machine learning, intelligent agents, intelligent multi-agents, web bots, information extraction, and Web-based learning.

Study of Open Cyc System for Knowledge Representation: Explored the feasibility of extracting the ontology of Cyc technology (OpenCyc), the world's largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine from their current architecture. Involved simulation of data models and environment taking into account latency and static in data transmission, using swarming and multi-agent theory. The intent was to port the knowledge base to an embedded environment for future use in creating embedded expert systems for distributive satellite computing. Results showed that impediments of distance and time and the limitations of Cyc makes this approach not feasible.

Bare Metal Install and Virtualizing a Java Operating System: Used a micro-kernel to boot to a minimalistic operating system running only a Java Virtual Machine, where system commands resided.

Headless Linux Cluster: Researched and assisted in designing architecture for a new headless cluster technology. The overall design enabled for previous storage cluster limitations (speed and storage capacity). This enhanced cluster architecture promoted flexible and organic data storage for rapid growth that exceeded previous expectations.

Autonomic Linux System Design: Using Artificial Intelligence techniques to develop an intelligent autonomic Linux operating system that automatically managed the operating system limited the user's need to manage or administrator the system.

Linux from Scratch for an Embedded Environment: Created a minimalistic operating system from source code to be used in an embedded environment. This project merged with FlightLinux, NASA'a space Linux project.

Intelligent Personal Assistant: Personalizing the end-user experience (portal technologies) through the use of emergence algorithms to learn and educate system behaviors such as customized workflow, data retrieval, and report generation.

Evolution of a GNU Linux distribution: Simplifying the installation and configuration of Linux and other Unix-like Operating systems.

Classes Taught

  • CIS111L Linux/Unix Operating Systems
  • CIS111M Personal Computer Operating Systems Concepts
  • CIS212 Personal Computer Repair and Diagnostics
  • LPI: Linux Fundamentals
  • LPI: Enterprise Linux Systems Administration
  • LPI: Enterprise Linux Networking Services
  • Porting Applications to an Open Source Platform
  • Developing Service Oriented Architecture on Linux
  • Introduction to Linux, Apache, mySQL/Postgres and PHP (LAMP) Programming

Presentations

  • Introduction to Open Source: Sage Small Business Services, LLC February 23, 2005; FITCI March 16, 2005; Hood College September 18, 2006
  • A Business case for Open Source: Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc. (FITCI) March 16, 2005
  • Open Source for Bio-Tech Companies: FITCI March 16, 2005
  • A Micro-Kernel Java-Based Virtualized Operating System: Hood College April 24-30, 2006
  • Explaining AI to Extraterrestrials: Hood College December 13, 2006
  • Simplifying Linux Operating System Design: Nitix July 24, 2006; Xandros December 16, 2006
  • Simplified Application Development: E2Open October 16, 2006; Xandros November 16, 2006

Contact Me

Email: [[MailTo(rwhetsel AT ravensong DOT com)] | Website: http://robertwhetsel.com/