Nicholas Collins

I currently work with Dataannotation.tech to assess the quality of AI responses and provide feedback that is used to train and further improve the AI models. Most of the tasks I take involve reading, writing, and/or evaluating code, usually python or Java.

Summary

• Software generalist (esp. Python, Java, OCaml, Scheme/Racket, Elm)
• Experienced in dev tools, IDEs, proof assistants, git, A/B testing, functional languages
• Some experience with SQL, front-end web, android, AI, teaching/mentoring, GraphQL

Work Experience (excludes undergrad internships)

November 2024 - Present (part-time, sporadic)

• Assess AI output quality, and make corrections to feed back into further training

February 2022

• Created short educational videos showing students how to solve math problems

June 2021 - September 2021

• Built language server in python to flag duplicate code in vim or vscode
• Can check for duplicate code across multiple files in parallel
• Open source

April 2021 - November 2022 (part-time, ~1-4 hrs / mo)

• Mentored 3 high school students with ambitious software projects
• Projects ranged from easier (develop a simple game) to highly advanced (3D robot modeling, E2E messaging platform)
• Met with students via Zoom for 8-10 sessions, tracking their progress, making suggestions, and setting goals and deadlines for continued work

April 2019 - June 2019, April 2020 - June 2020

• Held office hours to answer student questions
• Graded final projects

February 2013 - August 2015

• Developed IDE plugin to support Java language enhancements for dependency injection
• Wrote script to modify over 10,000 lines of dependency injection code in 100s of files
• Owner of Android client for A/B testing framework
• Developed backend and android client for configuration system
• Conducted monthly lessons for new hires and developed presentations explaining common A/B testing pitfalls to experienced users

Other Projects

August 2023 - February 2025

• Built in Godot and Python
• Pre-alpha, need income to support continued development

November 2015 - May 2017

• Program editor which stores programs in a SQL database rather than text files
• Capable of self-hosting: can view, edit, and compile itself
• Written in Scheme/Racket

Education

Master's degree in Computer Science

• Programming Languages Department
• Research Interests: PL Interfaces, IDEs, Proof Assistants, Synthesis, Structured editing
• Master's Thesis: "Delta Dictionaries: Total and Extensional Finite Maps in Proof Assistants"

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Turing Scholars Honors

Bachelor of Science, Mathematics: Pure Mathematics

• Computer Science GPA: 3.98
• Undergraduate Honors Thesis: “Transformation of Robot Model to Facilitate Optimization of Locomotion”
• Primary interests: AI, ML, robotics, automata theory

Publications

Cyrus Omar, David Moon, Andrew Blinn, Ian Voysey, Nick Collins, and Ravi Chugh

Program Sketching with Live Bidirectional Evaluation | ICFP 2020

Justin Lubin, Nick Collins, Cyrus Omar, and Ravi Chugh In Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (PACMPL), Issue ICFP

UT Austin Villa: RoboCup 2012 3D Simulation League Champion | LNCS 2013

Patrick MacAlpine, Nick Collins, Adrian Lopez-Mobilia, and Peter Stone In RoboCup-2012: Robot Soccer World Cup XVI, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7500