About
Andrew Nordstrom
I build production systems in places where most people wouldn't think to put them. On hardware that has no business running ML. In communities that have been overlooked.
Research engineer based in Boulder, Colorado.
How I Work
I follow questions. Most of my projects start because something doesn't make sense to me and the only way to figure it out is to build it.
A lot of my work comes back to the same instinct: taking processes that normally require expensive infrastructure and figuring out how to make them run somewhere they shouldn't. If something only works with unlimited resources, I'm not sure it actually works yet.
I care about legibility. If the people affected by a system can't understand how it works, I don't consider it done. That applies to code, to documentation, and to the systems themselves.
I think about engineering the way I think about writing. Both are clarity of thought expressed through deliberate choices.
Location
Boulder, Colorado
Education
University of Colorado Boulder
BS Mechanical Engineering
Minor in Data Science
Current Role
Research Software Engineer
Background
I've been building things since I was 14. The first real project was a wildfire detection system. A CNN running on a Raspberry Pi that could spot smoke from 3,000 feet and text GPS coordinates to first responders. It won Best in Fair and Intel's Excellence in Computer Science award two years running.
After that came a LiDAR-based precision agriculture system that cut water usage by 72% using computer vision and IoT sensors. Then a product design project that took first place at CU's IDE Design Expo.
I spent three years mentoring high school students through machine learning research. One became the 2024 National STEM Champion. Two reached the Regeneron International Science Fair. One won a $10,000 scholarship.
Right now I'm building federated recommendation systems and algorithmic governance infrastructure, with more in the works.
I'm not looking for one lane. I'm looking for the next place where two of them collide.