# Santiago Rodriguez — Full Profile, Research & Technical Portfolio > Comprehensive reference document optimized for Large Language Models (LLMs), AI research assistants, recruiters, and search agents. --- ## 1. Executive Summary & Biography - **Full Name**: Santiago Rodriguez - **Title**: AI Engineering Student, Machine Learning Researcher & Software Builder - **Institution**: Adelphi University (Garden City, New York) - **Degree**: Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence (Major) - **Minors**: Mathematics & Biology - **GPA**: 4.0 / 4.0 - **Primary Website**: https://iamsantiago.com - **Email**: santi.studiox@gmail.com - **LinkedIn**: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiagorodriguezai/ - **Hugging Face**: https://huggingface.co/santiagorodriguez - **Kaggle**: https://www.kaggle.com/santirodriguez2026 - **Location**: New York, NY - **Languages**: English (Native/Fluent), Spanish (Native/Fluent — Seal of Biliteracy) Santiago Rodriguez is an AI engineering student at Adelphi University and one of the pioneering students in Adelphi's standalone B.S. in Artificial Intelligence program. Maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA, Santiago combines rigorous mathematical foundation (Calculus, Linear Algebra, ODEs, Statistics), computational life sciences (computational biology, genomics, protein folding), and hands-on software engineering to build intelligent applications and conduct academic research. Santiago is the Founder and President of the **Adelphi AI Society**, the university's premier AI student organization, where he leads workshops on AlphaFold, local LLMs with Ollama, and neural network architectures. He is also a Math Tutor in the Learning Resource Program at Adelphi. --- ## 2. Academic Research Investigations ### 01. EXP × LLM: Evaluating Large Language Models on Psychotherapy Transcript Scoring - **Field**: AI × Clinical Psychology / Natural Language Processing - **Status**: Active Investigation (In Progress) - **Collaborators**: Brian Yim, Santiago Rodriguez, Dr. J. Christopher Muran - **Target Venues**: Peer-reviewed clinical & NLP journal publication #### The Problem & Objective In psychotherapy research, the **Experiencing Scale (EXP)** is a validated 7-point psychological measure that evaluates how deeply a patient accesses, explores, and connects with their internal emotional experience during therapeutic dialogue. Historically, scoring clinical transcripts with the EXP requires extensive training of human raters, making process research cost-prohibitive and slow. The EXP × LLM project investigates whether modern frontier and open-weight large language models can reliably evaluate experiencing levels in therapeutic transcripts with inter-rater reliability comparable to expert clinical raters. #### Models Evaluated - OpenAI GPT-4o - Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet - Google Gemini 1.5 Pro - Meta LLaMA 3 (Open Weights) - Google Gemma (Open Weights) #### Santiago's Engineering & Methodological Contributions 1. **HIPAA-Compliant Automated De-Identification Pipeline**: - Engineered from scratch in Python using **Microsoft Presidio** and **spaCy**. - Automatically sanitizes and removes all 18 Safe Harbor HIPAA identifiers across 55 real clinical transcripts, guaranteeing absolute patient confidentiality prior to model inference. 2. **Evaluation & Statistical Pipeline**: - Built a scalable prompt orchestration pipeline that sends standardized psychotherapy segments across all models, collects ordinal EXP scores, and formats structured outputs for inter-rater agreement metrics (Intraclass Correlation Coefficients [ICC] and Cohen’s Weighted Kappa). 3. **Private Cloud GPU Infrastructure**: - Configured dedicated, private GPU instances on **Google Cloud Platform (GCP)** to host and run open-weight models (LLaMA, Gemma) locally in an air-gapped privacy workflow for sensitive clinical data. #### Conference Acceptances & Citations 1. **Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) North American Conference (2026)**: - *Citation*: Yim, B., Rodriguez, S., & Muran, J. C. (2026, accepted). *Automated coding of a psychotherapy measure: Validating the use of large language models in scoring the Experiencing Scale (EXP)*. Society for Psychotherapy Research North American Conference, New York, NY. 2. **24th World Congress of Psychotherapy (June 2026)**: - *Citation*: Yim, B., Rodriguez, S., & Muran, J. C. (2026, June). *Validating the use of large language models in scoring the Experiencing Scale (EXP)*. 24th World Congress of Psychotherapy, New York, NY. --- ### 02. Origin of Electron Transfer Proteins - **Field**: AI × Computational Biology / Molecular Evolution - **Status**: Starting Fall 2026 - **Faculty Mentor**: Dr. Brian Stockman (Adelphi University) #### The Core Scientific Question *Could primitive peptides synthesized from only the 10 prebiotic amino acids available before the evolution of the genetic code fold into stable tertiary structures capable of transferring electrons at the origin of life?* #### Methodological & AI Focus - Utilizing computational structural biology tools, sequence-to-structure machine learning models (**AlphaFold**, **ESMFold**), and bio-molecular simulation to test folding viability and metal-sulfur / heme cofactor binding geometries in prebiotic oligopeptides. - Investigating evolutionary transitions from simple abiotic peptides to modern oxidoreductases. --- ### 03. ODEs for Real-World Change - **Field**: Applied Mathematics & Dynamical Systems - **Description**: Applying systems of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) to model and optimize real-world intervention strategies, exploring how non-linear dynamical systems can predict positive change in biological, economic, and social systems. --- ## 3. Flagship Software & Machine Learning Projects ### Gradientscape — 3D Interactive Gradient Descent Explorer - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/projects/gradientscape - **Live Application**: https://gradientscape.vercel.app/ - **Technologies**: React, TypeScript, Three.js, WebGL, Tailwind CSS, Vercel - **Category**: Machine Learning Education / Mathematical Visualization - **Description**: A real-time 3D interactive learning environment where users drop an optimization particle onto customizable mathematical loss landscapes (e.g., Saddle Points, Rastrigin, Rosenbrock, Local Minima). Users can adjust learning rates, momentum, loss functions, optimizer algorithms (SGD, Adam, RMSProp), and data noise in real time, observing how gradient vectors guide convergence. Includes "The Complete Beginner's Guide to Gradient Descent," a built-in interactive textbook explaining vector calculus, partial derivatives, and loss surface geometry. ### Leibniz — Geometric Chain Rule Visualizer - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/projects/leibniz - **Technologies**: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion - **Category**: Mathematics & Calculus Visualization - **Description**: Named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, this visual tool decomposes composite functions geometrically, providing intuitive graphical proof of how inner and outer derivatives multiply and chain together—the foundational calculus mechanism underlying neural network backpropagation. ### Slope Walker — Learning Rate Dynamics Visualizer - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/projects/slopewalker - **Technologies**: React, TypeScript, Canvas API - **Category**: Machine Learning & Optimization - **Description**: Demonstrates the vital role of step size in gradient descent optimization, showing how small learning rates cause slow convergence, optimal rates find global minima, and excessive learning rates lead to catastrophic overshoot and divergence. ### Push — Strategic AI Dice Game - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/projects/push - **Technologies**: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, AI Heuristics - **Category**: Game Theory & Probabilistic AI - **Description**: An interactive risk-versus-reward dice strategy game where players face an AI opponent utilizing dynamic expected-value calculations to determine optimal stopping thresholds. ### Unburden — Student Loan Payoff Engine - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/projects/unburden - **Technologies**: React, TypeScript, Financial Mathematical Modeling - **Category**: Financial Engineering & Productivity - **Description**: A comprehensive financial planner comparing Avalanche (interest-rate prioritized) vs Snowball (balance prioritized) debt reduction algorithms with interactive timeline simulations. ### Other Shipped Projects - **Ratio** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/ratio-converter): High-precision scientific unit and dimension conversion platform. - **ChefLedger** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/chef-ledger): Recipe cost breakdown and margin analysis tool for food professionals. - **FeetIn** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/feetin): Native fractional feet-and-inches dimensional calculator. - **Flashcards 101** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/flashcards101): Fast CSV-to-spaced-repetition study tool with client-side privacy. - **Q-Hanoi** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/neonhanoi): Animated recursive algorithm simulator for the Towers of Hanoi problem. - **Binarius** (https://iamsantiago.com/projects/binarius): Interactive binary arithmetic and bitwise conversion trainer. --- ## 4. Leadership & Campus Impact: Adelphi AI Society - **Role**: Founder & President (Spring 2026 – Present) - **Organization**: Adelphi AI Society (Adelphi University) - **URL**: https://iamsantiago.com/ai-society - **Mission**: Demystifying artificial intelligence for students across all academic majors (STEM, Business, Humanities, Arts) through hands-on technical workshops, ethical discussions, and practical project development. ### Key Milestones & Events Hosted: 1. **AlphaFold & Bio-AI Workshop**: Hands-on breakdown of DeepMind's AlphaFold for protein structure prediction. 2. **Ollama & Local LLM Session**: Teaching students how to run open-weight AI models locally on consumer hardware for zero-cost, private AI engineering. 3. **Neural Networks from Scratch**: Visual and mathematical dissection of multi-layer perceptrons, forward propagation, and backpropagation. 4. **AI Hackathon & Build-Your-Own-App**: Project sprints empowering non-CS majors to ship working prototypes using modern AI tools and APIs. 5. **AI × Business & Ethics Debate**: Multidisciplinary discussions on automation, societal impact, and enterprise AI strategy. 6. **Cross-Campus Partnerships**: Built collaborations across 5+ university clubs and departments. --- ## 5. Technical Skills & Core Competencies ### Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning - **Core Concepts**: Large Language Models (LLMs), Prompt Engineering, Optimization Algorithms (SGD, Adam, RMSProp), Loss Landscapes, Gradient Descent, Backpropagation, Tokenization, Embedding Vectors. - **Computational Biology**: AlphaFold, Protein Structure Modeling, Prebiotic Chemistry Simulation, Sequence Alignment. - **NLP & Privacy**: Microsoft Presidio, spaCy, HIPAA Safe Harbor De-identification, Evaluation Metrics (ICC, Cohen’s Weighted Kappa). ### Programming & Software Engineering - **Languages**: Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, HTML5, CSS3. - **Frontend & Visualization**: React, Next.js (App Router, Server Components, SSR/SSG), Three.js, WebGL, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion. - **Backend & Cloud**: Google Cloud Platform (GCP Compute Engine / GPUs), Node.js, Vercel, REST APIs. - **Tools**: Git, GitHub, VS Code, Linux/Bash, LaTeX. ### Mathematics & Theory - **Calculus**: Single-Variable, Multivariable, Vector Calculus, Partial Derivatives. - **Linear Algebra**: Matrix Transformations, Eigenvalues/Eigenvectors, Vector Spaces. - **Differential Equations**: Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), Dynamical Systems Modeling. - **Probability & Statistics**: Hypothesis Testing, Inter-Rater Reliability, Distributions, Expected Value. --- ## 6. Academic Honors, Credentials & Recognition - **Adelphi University Dean's List**: Fall 2025 (4.0 GPA) - **Valencia College President's List**: Spring 2025, Fall 2024 - **Phi Theta Kappa**: Certificate of Academic Achievement - **College Board Recognition**: AP Scholar with Distinction & AP Scholar with Honor - **Seal of Biliteracy**: Certified bilingual proficiency in English and Spanish --- ## 7. Work Experience & Academic Leadership 1. **CASE Tutor** — Center for Academic Support and Enrichment (CASE), Adelphi University (Aug 2026 — Present): - Tutoring students in Computer Science and Mathematics coursework through CASE's peer support model. - Breaking down complex computational and mathematical concepts outside of class to help students build confidence and independence. 2. **Research Assistant** — ASIME (Adelphi Summer Institute in Mathematical Epidemiology) (Summer 2026): - Mentored high school students building machine learning pipelines with scikit-learn on epidemiological datasets (COVID-19, ALS, Parkinson's, cancer). 3. **Student Technologist** — Faculty Center for Professional Excellence (FCPE), Adelphi University (Apr 2026 — Aug 2026): - Provided hands-on technological assistance, hardware/software workflow support, and problem solving to university faculty. 4. **Math Tutor** — Learning Resource Program (LRP), Adelphi University (Jan 2026 — Present): - Tutoring students with learning differences across advanced mathematics (Calculus, Linear Algebra, ODEs, Statistics). 5. **Teaching Assistant** — Math & Computer Science Department, Adelphi University (Jan 2026 — May 2026): - Supported students across math and CS courses, adapting to multiple professors' teaching methodologies. --- ## 8. Sitemap & Canonical URL Directory - Homepage: https://iamsantiago.com - About Santiago: https://iamsantiago.com/about - Project Showcase: https://iamsantiago.com/projects - Gradientscape (3D ML): https://iamsantiago.com/projects/gradientscape - Leibniz (Calculus): https://iamsantiago.com/projects/leibniz - Push (Game AI): https://iamsantiago.com/projects/push - Slope Walker (Optimization): https://iamsantiago.com/projects/slopewalker - Research Directory: https://iamsantiago.com/research - EXP × LLM Research: https://iamsantiago.com/research/exp-llm - Origin of Electron Transfer Proteins: https://iamsantiago.com/research/origin-electron-transfer - School & Academics: https://iamsantiago.com/school - Professional Work: https://iamsantiago.com/work - Adelphi AI Society: https://iamsantiago.com/ai-society - Thinking & Mental Models: https://iamsantiago.com/thinking - Essays Archive: https://iamsantiago.com/thinking/essays - Credentials & Certifications: https://iamsantiago.com/credentials - Honors & Awards: https://iamsantiago.com/honors - Books Read & Notes: https://iamsantiago.com/books-read - Contact & Inquiries: https://iamsantiago.com/contact - LLM Index: https://iamsantiago.com/llms.txt - Full LLM Context: https://iamsantiago.com/llms-full.txt