Person

I tend to be a very private person and prefer investing the vast majority of my time with people and relationships in the real world. I also tend to work on projects that have different levels of protections, intellectual property rights, and security requirements and as such am limited in what I can share publicly. So, my online presence may be sparse, uneven, or occasionally very rich. Mileage may vary. If you want to know who I really am as a person find me at a conference, invite me for coffee/tea, visit me in the glass studio, or ask me to come visit and give a talk about my work/research. I love meeting new people and learning about what excites you. Maybe we can find some overlaps of passion? 

My Personal Hobbies are Glassblowing, Metalwork, Boating, Camping, Games (board, card, video), Wine-making, Woodworking, Gardening, Woodwork, and Quadcopters.

G. Michael Youngblood, PhD, is Chief Scientist at Filuta AI, where he directs Filuta AI Labs and the research as well as the development behind the Atlas document-intelligence platform, in production with EU government agencies. Over thirty years he has shipped intelligent systems from a learning smart home to explainable autonomous drones, as a Distinguished Principal Scientist at PARC, a tenured computer science professor at UNC Charlotte, and a U.S. Navy nuclear submariner. He has authored 115 publications, holds nine U.S. patents across sixteen families, and studies how engineering teams and engineering education change as AI becomes a collaborator. He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

G. Michael Youngblood, PhD, is an artificial intelligence systems researcher, engineer, and all-around builder who gets intelligent systems into production. He is Chief Scientist at Filuta AI and Director of Filuta AI Labs, where he leads the research as well as the development behind Atlas, a document-intelligence platform that turns large, heterogeneous document collections into searchable knowledge, entity dossiers, and automated reports, in use by government agencies. His career focus is interactive artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration, and automated planning, delivered as systems used by real people. His current research asks how engineering teams and engineering education change as AI shifts from tool to collaborator, and how to mentor engineers through that transition.

Before Filuta, Dr. Youngblood spent twelve years at PARC, the Palo Alto Research Center, rising to Distinguished Principal Scientist. He led the Fittle behavior-change platform from concept through eight pilot studies with more than 1,200 users to commercialization; served as Co-Principal Investigator and technical lead on four DARPA programs, including the Explainable AI program’s COGLE project, which explained autonomous drone decisions to the people responsible for them; and was Principal Investigator of a project that reprogrammed field-programmable gate arrays on cubesat satellites in orbit-like conditions to survive single-event effects. His PARC-era inventions produced nine granted U.S. patents across sixteen patent families, with additional grants in Canada and Japan.

Earlier, he was a tenured associate professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he directed the Game Intelligence Group, co-founded the Game Design & Development degree programs, and mentored eleven senior design and studio teams that shipped working systems, from Xbox games to an autonomous underwater vehicle, through public demonstration days. His doctoral graduates now work at OpenAI, Sandia National Laboratories, and Salesforce. Before that, he was chief scientist of the National Science Foundation-funded MavHome smart home project at UT Arlington. He has authored 115 publications (h-index 24), has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on more than $29M of sponsored research, chaired the IAAI, AIIDE, and FLAIRS conferences, received FLAIRS’s Douglas D. Dankel II Award for service, and was a member of the 2007 DARPA Computer Science Study Group.

Dr. Youngblood came to engineering through work and military service: eight years in the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine force, specializing in mechanical systems, nuclear chemistry, and radiological controls. He is a plank owner of USS BOISE (SSN-764), helped decommission USS CANOPUS (AS-34), and helped lead the improvement of USS EMORY S. LAND (AS-39) into one of the fleet’s best nuclear repair facilities. He earned his associate’s degree by correspondence while standing watch at sea, his bachelor’s summa cum laude as a veteran, his master’s in evening classes while working as a software engineer, and his PhD in computer science and engineering at UT Arlington in 2005. Thirty-five years on, he is still known for getting the job done on time, on budget, and by design.

He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he serves on the board of a rural water association near Cloudcroft, volunteers as a projectionist at southern New Mexico’s only art-house cinema, and works as a furnace glass artist, trained in Murano, Italy. He is a member of AAAI, the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society, a Tau Beta Pi Fellow (2002–03), and a member of Sigma Xi.

My name is Michael or in more formal settings Dr. Youngblood (preferred) or Professor Youngblood (for those of you that feel only medical doctors are actually doctors, I have held this title so it is appropriate).

How do you pronounce "G. Michael Youngblood?" Well, the "G" is silent. 😀and the rest is  "MY"-kull, where kull - rhymes with dull.  y UH ng b l UH d. My first name is Gregory, that is not a secret, my parents always called me by my middle name instead and I have never changed that. There are a few of us odd ball middle name folks around. 

Oh, and if you really need to know, my pronouns are he / himself / his unless it is in a publication in which I have worked with others, which is often the case, then it is they / them / theirs of course,  I also like the royal we. 

2005 Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Intelligent Systems

• • Advisors: Lawrence B. Holder and Diane J. Cook, GPA: 4.00/4.00

  • Dissertation: Automating Inhabitant Interactions in Home and Workplace Environments through Data-Driven Generation of Hierarchical Partially-Observable Markov Decision Processes

  • Sigma Xi

2002 M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Intelligent Systems

• • Advisor: Lawrence B. Holder, GPA: 4.00/4.00

  • Thesis: Agent-based Simulated Cognitive Intelligence in Real-time Entertainment-based Artificial Environments

1999 Honors B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Robotics

• • Thesis Advisor: Lawrence B. Holder, GPA 4.00/4.00 Summa Cum Laude

  • Thesis: Autonomous Mobile Robot Exploration and Mapping of Place-Centric Occupancy Grids 

  • Tau Beta Pi, Texas Eta

  • Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Texas Gamma

  • Omicron Delta Kappa, Sincerus Orbis Circle

  • Golden Key Honor Society

1995 A.S. in Nuclear Engineering Technologies, Thomas Edison State College, Radiation Protection

1989-1994 U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Engineering Training:

• • 1994 Radiological Materials Shipper, Norfolk, VA

  • 1993 Radiological Controls Maintenance, IMANPY, Charleston, SC

  • 1990 D1G Engineering Laboratory Technician, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories (DOE), Ballston Spa, NY 

  • 1990 D1G Prototype Mechanical Operator, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories (DOE), Ballston Spa, NY 

  • 1989 Naval Nuclear Power School, Orlando, FL

  • 1989 Nuclear Field “A” School (Mechanical), Orlando, FL

1988 Bishop High School

• • Graduated 7th of 88

  • National Honor Society

  • Mu Alpha Theta 

I am a Myers-Briggs type  ENTP-A. While some folk's personality preferences are clearly indicative of a certain type, I tend to be more neutral and lean towards this type. I believe that this helps me understand other preference sets, and has allowed me to listen, internalize, and empathize more with others. I have also participated in FIRO-B evaluation, which revealed an expressed/wanted behavior preference set typical in strong team builders and leaders. 

Psychometric analysis is an interesting area, but not necessary an exact science. I am always interested in talking with others that have participated in formal personal psychometric evaluations with the caveat that you have to know yourself and your preferences/scores to discuss me and mine.

LinkedIn - My digital CV

Instagram - Social picture sharing.

Twitter - Public ramblings with infrequent posts.

YouTube - Research videos and other recordings.

Pinterest - A sense of my style or atleast the style of the ideas I collect.

500px - High quality pictures I have taken that I am sharing with everyone including use in other peoples projects, media, and other art.

Facebook - The ethically-challenged social network. I am no longer an active member. Catch me on Instagram instead. I know that they are both owned by different type-face (i.e., 2-faced) FACEBOOK, INC.

I am a level 7 Google Local Guide as well as an Open Street Map contributor working to improve the data in the world around us.