Vlad Mihai TRIFA
OBJECTIVES
Dynamic, flexible and creative researcher seeks a challenging position in a leading research environment. Willing to combine a solid scientific background and communication skills to facilitate collaboration within team members on inspiring innovative projects.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. student at the Institute for Pervasive Computing, working on a middleware to support fast-prototyping of interactive, distributed systems for physical computing (sensor/actuators networks).
A framework for bird songs recognition and localization using acoustic sensor networks.
Participated in a multidisciplinary project and development of tools and methods for automated bio-acoustics monitoring. Final grade 6/6.
Concentration in artificial and swarm intelligence, machine learning, bio-inspired robotics, embedded systems, sensor networks, intelligent information systems, and speech processing.
EXPERIENCE
Research in collaborative smart items for business applications. The goal is to extend current SAP systems (SAP NetWeaver and xMII) to easily integrate physical computing devices into high-level business software and IT systems, to improve flexibility and efficiency of SAP solutions.
Implementation of multi-modal processing for human-robot interaction using acoustic and visual signal. Development of an integrated and complex control system for a humanoid robot running on a cluster of computers.
Coordinated a project between biology and engineering departments. Complete developement of a framework for embedded sensor networks to perform automatic bird songs detection, localization, and species/individuals classification using speech recognition tools.
Assistant for hardware maintenance and software implementation of control architecture on multiple embedded systems. Upgrade of a robotic hardware platform, development of TinyOS driver for a video camera, low-power wireless interface between micro-robots and sensor networks.
Photographer for the US top-rated college newspaper. Published many photos on cover page and acquired good experience with digital photography, graphic editing tools, journalism in general and work in a media-related environment.
PROJECTS
Semester project at the Biologically-Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG), EPFL, under supervision of Prof. Auke Jan Ijspeert. Design, implementation and simulation of an associative memory model using coupled non-linear oscillators. Final grade: 6/6.
Semester project at the Swarm-Intelligent Systems Research Group (SWIS), EPFL, under supervision of Prof. Alcherio Martinoli. Complete creation of a framework in Java and Matlab for distributed sound source localization with sensor networks. Final grade: 6/6.
LANGUAGES
| French | native language |
| Romanian | native language |
| English | fluent |
| German | fluent |
| Japanese | intermediate (Japanese Proficiency test level 3 diploma) |
SKILLS
Programming: Java, C/C++, PERL, Shell scripting, VHDL, Assembler, LISP, UML.
SAP: Implementation and configuration of SAP Application Server, ERP, NetWeaver, and BBD.
Internet: PHP, CSS, XML, MySQL, ORACLE, Dreamweaver, Photoshop.
Tools: Matlab, LaTeX , Office XP, Visual Studio.
Operating Systems: UNIX, Windows, TinyOS, and MacOS.
CONFERENCES
Invited session chair on Artificial Life and Living, for the International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB 12th ‘07), Beppu, Oita, Japan.
Organized a workshop at LIFT 08 conference (25 attendees), titled “Upgrade your company”
Invited talks
France Telecom R&D Labs, Grenoble, Jan 2008.
EU/Swiss Kansai Talk in Osaka, Japan about opportunities and threats of mobile tehcnologies for our society.
Invited participation at the international bioacoustics monitoring expert group organized by the German Ministery of Nature Conservation, Island of Vilm, December 2007.
INTERESTS
Member of IEEE, ACM, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Experienced freelance photographer and web designer.
Played several years with an improvisation theatre group in Switzerland and Canada.
Coordinator of the EU/Swiss-Kansai Roundtables to promote economic and scientific partnerships between European and Japanese centers of excellence in technology.
Arts, philosophy, jazz and classical music, world cultures and food, snowboarding, bicycling, martial arts.
