Benjamin Black

I am a computer scientist and software engineer. In 2021, I recived a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. In 2018 I graduated from from Reed College with a B.A. in Computer Science.

The focus of my M.S. work was on reinforcement learning, particularly multi-agent reinforcement learning evaluation. My undergrad work was focused on CS theory, computer systems, and parallel processing.

However, despite these credentials, I still consider myself a self-taught programmer who learned by creating cool software projects relating to challenges in AI, Computer Systems, and games.

Major Projects
PettingZoo (2020-2021)
Gym for Multi-Agent RL. 200+ Academic citations, 2000+ github stars.
Website
Publication
Code
Accelerating CAS-Offinder (2022)
Accelerating an open source genome fuzzy search tool.
Fast, Simple Rectangular Search (2022)
Using Rust to implement simple, extremely fast data structures and algorithms for rectangular intersection problems
Multi-Agent Arcade Learning Environment (2020)
A multi-agent extension to the Arcade Learning Environment
Publication
Code
Reward Surfaces (2021)
Visualizing the shape of the reinforcment learning objective.
SuperSuit (2020)
General environment transformation wrappers for PettingZoo and Gym. (400+ github stars)
Code
Hybrid chess engine (2019)
A chess engine that attempts to combine the strengths of Lc0 and Stockfish, the two dominant chess engines, and succeeds in certain cases.
Code
Unsupervised Music Classification (2018)
Project exploring music and how to train a network to automatically group similar music together.
Code