Michael L. Valenzuela is a Graduate Research Assistant and Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department. He hopes to obtain his Ph.D. by May 2012 with a focus on machine-learning and decision theory. He is working on a split minor between Systems and Industrial Engineering and ECE (with a hardware orientation). The majority of his coursework has been on modeling & simulation, artificial intelligence, and optimization.

Michael's research interests include modeling & simulation, decision theory, and machine learning. He is currently actively engaged in developing Anti-Training with Sacrificial Data, a novel meta-learning prospect which exploits certain theoretical equalities. His goal is to design new strategies to help computers reason and learn more like humans. Human biases and assumptions, while sometimes wrong, often aid in the learning and decision making processes. He hopes to improve machine-learning and reasoning by incorporating human-like biases into the AI.

He has previously worked on the Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Program (ATRAP). On this project he worked with a subject matter expert to help design the Query Model (QM). The QM is a model for capturing and automating intelligence analysts' decision making process. A more recent research project for ATRAP is the Decision Support Tool (DST). It allows for the creation of games and provides analysis of the games using deterministic equivalents of stochastic (discrete) game trees. ATRAP is freely available to all of the US government.

The plans for his future strongly depend on what his research produces. If his research produces any patentable methodologies, then industry-specific patents may be sold to continue his research. Alternatively, he hopes to apply his expertise and interests of modeling, math and optimization to either private industry or government. At this moment in time he does not anticipate post-doctoral work.

During his free time, he enjoys one of his several hobbies. He enjoys studying topics tangential to his research (calculus of variations, teaching, and plants). While he does not have much time to play video games, he tries to keep up the latest PC video games. For recreation he gardens and grows several varieties of roses, ferns, vegetables and herbs. As a side project, he is currently collecting data to determine how much fuel additives help his car's miles per gallon (MPG). He is also a strong believer that most knowledge is meant to be shared. He freely tutors on any topic of which he has a firm grasp.