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AJ Barea

PhD Student · Federated Learning and Agentic AI

I build federated learning frameworks and multi-agent development systems. My research sits at the intersection of trustworthy distributed ML, human-on-the-loop AI agents, and developer experience for AI-assisted software.

Experience & Education

  • Doctor of PhilosophyCurrent

    Computing and Information Sciences · Rochester Institute of Technology

    Research on coding agents that learn each organization's conventions and pool what generalizes, while each organization decides what may leave. Advisor: Dr. Leon Reznik. Also an NSF AWARE-AI National Research Traineeship (NRT) trainee in the AI Software track.

    Federated Learning · Agentic AI · Code Review · LoRA

  • Summer Research Scholar

    SCADS · Summer Conference on Applied Data Science · NC State · Laboratory for Analytic Sciences

    Selected for a competitive summer research cohort applying data science to analytic sensemaking problems. Built agentic sensemaking and governed MCP orchestration prototypes and a motion-first tracking pipeline for camouflaged targets in video.

    Claude Agent SDK · MCP · Agentic AI · Video Object Tracking

  • Teaching Assistant

    Software Architecture · Rochester Institute of Technology

    Mentored students through design patterns, architectural styles, and quality attributes. Led a full class session during the instructor's absence.

    Software Architecture · Design Patterns · Mentoring · Code Review · Teaching

  • Graduate Research AssistantCurrent

    Laboratory of Data Quality and Intelligent Security (LDQIS) · Rochester Institute of Technology

    Built InteFL's pytest suite (80%+ coverage, run in GitHub Actions CI), its attack and defense tooling, and its Hugging Face text-dataset loaders. Built the lab's new website.

    Federated Learning · pytest · GitHub Actions · Hugging Face · Astro

  • Master of Science

    Software Engineering · Rochester Institute of Technology

    GPA: 4.0/4.0. Capstone: enhanced the InteFL federated learning execution framework under Dr. Leon Reznik.

    Machine Learning · Distributed Systems · Cloud Computing · Software Architecture · Python

  • Software Engineer (Contract)

    Distribution Management Systems · Lowe's Home Improvement

    Cut daily error logs by 150,000 across RDCs. Built full-stack automation tooling. Reduced onboarding time by 80%.

    Java · SQL · Spring Boot · Full-Stack · Agile

  • UX Developer (Internship)

    Development Team · Phiquest

    Built a blockchain-based document-authenticator Chrome extension in Node.js. Wireframed web-app surfaces with cross-functional teams.

    JavaScript · Node.js · UX Design · Blockchain · Figma

  • Bachelor of Science

    Computer Engineering · University of South Florida

    GPA: 3.06/4.0. Capstone: shipped the PhiQuest blockchain-explorer document-certification system with Allen Cheng and Ethan Wuitschick.

    C · C++ · Embedded Systems · Digital Logic · Microcontrollers

Research Ecosystem

A coordinated family of repos exploring agentic AI and federated learning from complementary angles. Each is independently invocable.

  • Kourai Khryseai (opens on GitHub)

    Multi-agent software-development forge: maidens-as-specialists over A2A, MCP sidecars, transparent human-on-the-loop.

  • Phalanx-FL (opens on GitHub)

    Federated LoRA fine-tuning testbed on the current Flower release, with OpenTelemetry traces and metrics for every round and client.

  • Pharos (opens on GitHub)

    Federated personalization testbed with security-labeled synthetic data. Measures what a personal/shared boundary costs and how much leaks past it.

  • Velocity-FL (opens on GitHub)

    Federated learning research toolkit with a Rust core, Python bindings (maturin), PyTorch and Hugging Face model support, and an MCP server interface.

  • LDQIS Lab (opens on GitHub)

    Public website for the Laboratory of Data Quality and Intelligent Security at RIT.

  • Techne (opens on GitHub)

    Claude Code plugin marketplace: repository maintenance, adversarial code review, LaTeX and slide builds, and bibliography verification.

  • Orchestrate Triage (opens on GitHub)

    Agentic issue triage on Claude Opus and the Anthropic Message Batches API: classifies, prioritizes, and routes incoming reports at batch scale.

Recent Activity

Technical Expertise

Languages & Frameworks
Python, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, C++, C, Rust, SQL, React, Vue.js, Spring Boot, FastAPI, Node.js
Cloud & DevOps
AWS EC2, AWS S3, AWS Lambda, AWS DynamoDB, AWS API Gateway, AWS CloudFront, AWS Cognito, AWS Rekognition, AWS Comprehend, AWS Translate, Docker, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Slurm
AI & Machine Learning
PyTorch, Hugging Face, scikit-learn, PEFT (LoRA), Flower, Federated Learning, Webots, Reinforcement Learning, Claude Agent SDK, Model Context Protocol (MCP), A2A Protocol
Tools & Platforms
Git, Perforce, Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, VS Code, pytest, OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Prometheus

Contact

Email is the fastest way to reach me.