Michael Gussert
Senior Research Engineer at Wētā FX
Hillsboro, Oregon, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Gussert is a Senior Research Engineer with nine years of hands-on experience building embodied AI, simulation-to-reality pipelines, and neuro-inspired vision systems, now applying that expertise to cinematic VFX at Wētā FX. He spent a decade at NVIDIA developing models of mammalian cognition, foveated vision grounded in V1 mechanics, and early sim-to-real methods for Omniverse and Isaac Sim, while authoring tutorials and teaching labs on simulation and reinforcement learning. His background in experimental physics (MS/PhD) and particle astrophysics gives him a rare blend of rigorous analytical modeling and practical systems engineering, from C++ DAQ and spectral-analysis tools to PyTorch implementations of graph-theoretic generalization experiments. Known for prototyping high-impact demos (e.g., reinforcement agents and perception pipelines showcased at SIGGRAPH/GTC) and mentoring teams, he thrives at the intersection of research, production engineering, and applied neuroscience-inspired AI.
9 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Physics, Bachelor's degree, Physics at Michigan Technological UniversityDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physics at Colorado State University
English, c/c++, python, java, fortran, perl, bash
Github Skills (62)
simulation10
pytorch10
robotics10
python10
gymnasium10
reinforcement-learning10
robot10
nvidia10
gpu10
q-learning10
ros10
expressions9
data-science9
toolbox9
parallel9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
mpgussert/fundamentalRL
Apr 2020 - Jan 2022
Contributions:11 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 9 months
mpgussert/TEMt
Oct 2024 - Nov 2024
Contributions:2 pushes, 2 branches in 1 month
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