I am a first-year graduate student in the Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I work as a research assistant in the Vision and Security Technology (VAST) Lab where I am a Research Assistant, as well as Team Lead of the Facial Imaging, Processing, and Analysis Team. My research interests focus on employing cortical models of vision to improve machine-based face recognition.
Prior to graduate work, I graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA in May, 2009 with a B.S. in Computer Science. I balance my graduate work between various software engineering endeavors under the umbrella of Synaptogenesis Network Technologies as well as more Neuroscience-focused research with my father, Dr. Kevin L. Parks, D.C., D.A.B.C.N.
In all the free time I don't have, I enjoy hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing. I also play guitar and occasionally write a song or two (though "occasionally" is rapidly becoming "rarely").
The Colorado Chronicles (for those souls who wish to keep in touch with me)
A diatribe by Edsgar Dijkstra "On the Cruelty of really teaching Computer Science"
This is Your Brain on Music. Daniel J. Levitin
The Brain that Changes Itself. Norman Doidge
The World In Six Songs. Daniel J. Levitin
Proust was a Neuroscientist. Jonah Lehrer
In Search of Memory. Eric Kandel
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Oliver Sacks
The Man with the Phantom Twin. V. S. Ramachandran
How We Decide. Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer (author of some of the books I've read recently)
Norman Doidge (author of some other books I've read recently)
Nicolas Pinto (another Ph.D. Student in the field of brain-inspired computer vision)
Comics I follow: XKCD, PHD Comics, Dilbert