Odds and Ends

by Suzan McKay | January 24, 2019

It’s been a busy winter here at CCRi with expansion of all types going on. We are growing with new and expanded projects, our operations practices are getting fine-tuned, and we continue to grow physically here at our Sachem Village headquarters, constructing additional space in our newest building.

Happy Birthday, Navy!

Last October, the 13^th to be exact, proud navy veteran Mike K. brought in a large sheet cake and a sword(!) to celebrate the US Navy’s 243^rd birthday. Veterans from all services (as well as civilians) got to enjoy some cake.

Mike draws First Blood.
Jeff G (also a veteran) takes a stab at it.

Mike K has learned to relax his personal dress code considerably since his Navy days, sometimes living the barefoot/standing desk lifestyle.

NEURIPS

The love of continual learning and research is always in play here at CCRi. Tim E and Alex P took a trip to wintry Montreal last month to attend the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NEURIPS) sharing the love with fellow machine learning/computational neuroscience enthusiasts. While there Tim E chatted up Soumith Chintala (of Facebook) who is the lead developer for PyTorch, and Alex P was lucky enough to meet Geoff Hinton, the “grandfather” of neural networks.

Alex P with “The Grandfather” Geoff Hinton
Tim E chats with Soumith Chintala

General CCRi silliness…

Sue and James
Jereme mesmerized by floating blue dogs

Bread Lines: Food Truck lunch line
Ben R threatens to Take Over the World!

Masked Bandit Frank rides off into the sunset
Bub-bye, Big HP! Sorry to see you go. (Not)

Cat Feeder!

The ever-inventive brain of the data scientist/software engineer never sleeps. Our own Eric N has cleverly devised a rustic yet effective dry cat food feeder that runs on a timer and delivers a precise amount of cat food cleanly and efficiently. We didn’t have cat food so a handful of Cocoa Puffs were substituted. The timer was set. We sat, had a beer and waited, along with Jordan’s dog, Max. It worked! Prepare the assembly line.

Waiting for the cat feeder to release the kibble.
Bespoke cat feeder. Order yours today!
Success! Cat Feeder Celebration.

CCRi Holiday Party

It wouldn’t be winter without our annual swanky CCRi Holiday Party at UVA’s Alumni Hall. We put on our sparkles (more or less) and enjoyed sophisticated dining and social interaction. Here are a few moments captured from that event.