Nick Fausti
Palo Alto, CA
Current Projects:
Parla
Language learning partner w/ Speech-to-Text and TTS synthesis using LLMs
Language learning partner w/ Speech-to-Text and TTS synthesis using LLMs
AssetForge
A self-hosted text/image → 3D asset pipeline built on open-source models — local LLM brief planning, multi-view image generation, and TRELLIS.2 image→3D with native PBR, then decimation/LODs and export to GLB, FBX, and USDZ. Everything runs locally on a single GPU box, no per-asset API costs. It's the main asset pipeline behind Parla.
A self-hosted text/image → 3D asset pipeline built on open-source models — local LLM brief planning, multi-view image generation, and TRELLIS.2 image→3D with native PBR, then decimation/LODs and export to GLB, FBX, and USDZ. Everything runs locally on a single GPU box, no per-asset API costs. It's the main asset pipeline behind Parla.
Experience
Software Engineer
Google
- Part of a team bringing Gemini to Google Assistant
- Developed an LLM-based defect detection and management system for Google Home and Assistant
October 2024 – Present
Front-end Software Engineer
NIQ (MRI Simmons)
March 2023 – October 2024
Lead Software Engineer
Clyde
- Led a team of 5 software engineers to develop and maintain client facing applications used by millions of people
- Ongoing full-stack development and engineering management
August 2022 – December 2022
Founding Software Engineer
smile ML
- Developed two desktop application minimum viable products (MVPs) in one month using Node.js, Electron, React, Tailwind, and Firebase
- Ongoing full-stack development and engineering management for cross-platform machine learning based applications
- Developed a calendar synchronization system and data pipeline to integrate and launch application based on calendar events and attendants
June 2021 – July 2022
Technical Advisor
Intellectus App
- Architected and developed an MVP of an online learning platform in vanilla JS, Flask, and Open-CV
- Computer vision-based web application to help keep students engaged in class and increase retention of material
- App is currently in use by NASA JPL and California public schools
March 2020 – May 2021
Senior Full-Stack Engineer
Brightfield Group
- Developed a full-stack single-page application dashboard in React to view analytics information related to NLP
- Built a RESTful API in Django to facilitate interaction between backend databases and front-end of dashboard
- Integrated various social media APIs into SPA backend
- Scraped content from web, regularized, and stored in backend to be used in offline machine learning processing
- Built an openCV landing page that takes in user’s photos and returns color palettes for each image
- Built a marketing landing-page and social login data collection CMS
June 2017 – Present
Associate Director – Software Engineering
IQVIA
- Built an API to expose machine learning models that help facilitate the selection of clinical trial investigator sites
- Created a React front-end to display results and allow users to interactively apply changes to model parameters of ML API
June 2017 – April 2019
Senior Research Programmer
University of Pennsylvania - Positive Psychology Center
- Developed a single-page application front-end for a personality evaluation tool
- Scraped all hospital reviews from Yelp using Scrapy library to run differential language analysis on
- Ran differential language analysis on multiple hospital characteristics using yelp review language data
- Building web infrastructure to expose internal natural language processing APIs to external researchers
June 2016 – June 2017
Research Programmer
University of Pennsylvania - School of Medicine
- Created a tool to automate the visual selection and data analysis of the calcium signaling fluorescence variation in cells as a result of pharmacological treatments using OpenCV, matplotlib, and Python.
- Created a web based mapping and search system with Google Maps to help with the inference of a correlation between healthcare utilization in Northeastern Pennsylvania and hydraulic natural gas fracturing nearby.
- Developed a freezer/reagent inventory application with Django, DRF API, and iOS barcode scanning front-end.
- Worked as part of a team to create a natural language search system using the Python NLTK library to allow scientists to search medical records, environmental exposure data, and retrieve blood/tissue sample information for those records in plain English queries.
- Successfully managed the migration of tissue sample data and participant case report form data into a new laboratory information management system at the proof of concept stage.
- Gathered requirements for lab workflows and processes to be used as a model for future data migrations throughout the Perelman School of Medicine/Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
- Working on creating an ontological framework to be used as a data standard for biomedical investigations throughout the Perelman School of Medicine.
- Working on an iOS application for principal investigators to use as a tool to stay informed on the state of various projects/studies and view results from experiments involved with each study.
December 2011 – May 2016
Software Engineer
Single Throw Internet Marketing
June 2011 – November 2011
Software Engineer Test
Comcast Corporation
January 2010 – June 2010
Software Developer Intern
Johnson & Johnson
June 2008 – September 2009
Education
University of Pennsylvania
Master of Science in Engineering
Computer and Information Science
Rutgers University
Bachelor of Arts
Information Technology & Informatics; Economics
Skills
Programming Languages & Tools
Core Competencies
- Full-Stack Software Engineering
- Game Development in Unreal Engine and Unity
- Computer Vision and Computational Photography
- Natural Language Processing
- Applied Machine Learning/Deep Learning w/ scikit-learn & PyTorch
- Mobile-First, Responsive Web Development
- Cross-Browser Web Scraping, Testing, & Debugging
- Agile Development & Scrum
Interests
Apart from being a software engineer, the majority of my time is spent learning new things that interest me.
I love traveling and new experiences. I spent most of 2018 living around the world with 35 other people, while doing a program called Remote Year.
I love spending time in nature and also love photography. Here are a few recent ones; the full album is at photos.nickfausti.com, or check out my Instagram here.
Projects
Publications
-
Seltzer, E. K., Guntuku, S. C., Lanza, A. L., Tufts, C., Srinivas, S. K., Klinger, E. V., Asch, D. A., Fausti, N., Ungar, L. H., & Merchant, R. M. (2022)
Patient Experience and Satisfaction in Online Reviews of Obstetric Care: Observational Study.
JMIR formative research, 6(3), e28379. https://doi.org/10.2196/28379 -
Agarwal A,
Mahoney K,
Lanza A,
Klinger E,
Asch A,
Fausti N,
Tufts C,
Ungar L,
Merchant R (2018)
Online Ratings of the Patient Experience: Emergency Departments Versus Urgent Care Centers
Annals of Emergency Medicine, Volume 73, Issue 6, 631 - 638 -
Jemielita T, Gerton GL, Neidell M, Chillrud S, Yan B, Stute M, et al. (2015)
Unconventional Gas and Oil Drilling Is Associated with Increased Hospital Utilization Rates.
PLoS ONE 10(7): e0131093.