Welcome to the webpage of D. Estes McKnight!

Who Am I?

I'm a freelance software developer and English-language editor who does machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) research.

I did my research master's degree in computing science at the University of Alberta with a focus on ML and NLP under Dr. Alona Fyshe. My thesis was on age-related differences in object comparison as revealed through interpretable neural embeddings, and it can be found here.

Prior to being in Edmonton, AB, I did my undergrad at the University of Oklahoma, dual-degreeing in mathematics and computer science + computer engineering. In ye olden times, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.

My hobbies include reading about languages, playing games with friends, and reading about games in a variety of senses (which, for better or for worse, seems to happen more often than actually playing them nowadays). A niche interest of mine is video game music, including listening to it, organizing interest in it/its composers, and archiving it. Hit me up for some recommendations, if you so desire! My favorite soundtracks are those of Chrono Trigger (Yasunori Mitsuda) and Radiant Historia (Yoko Shimomura, of Kingdom Hearts fame); I'm also a big fan of a variety of more obscure stuff, though (check out this SNES track from Dean Evans)!