Fresno, California  ·  Class of 2028  ·  CSCI Student → AI/ML Researcher & Engineer

Eric Pineda Ramirez

AI/ML Engineering  ·  Computer Vision  ·  Assistive Technology  ·  AI Research

Research Projects Get in Touch
Scroll

Research Statement

Capability without inclusion
is an incomplete solution.

AI systems are becoming increasingly capable — but the question of who they serve, and where they fail, is still being written. My research asks a specific question: where does that gap show up in the physical world, and what does it take to close it through AI and ML? I approach that question from lived experience as a full-time power wheelchair user with SMA Type 2, grounded in the belief that the people most affected by inaccessible systems are best positioned to design the solutions. My research spans AI and machine learning — from computer vision and on-device inference to responsible system design — with a focus on building technology that works for everyone it touches, not just those it was designed around. Relay is my empirical answer in progress.

About

Who I am.

I'm a Computer Science student at Fresno State pursuing AI/ML Engineering, with a focus on computer vision, on-device AI, and building technology that makes real life more accessible.

The gap between what AI can do and who it actually serves is where my research lives. I study how that gap shows up in the real world and what it takes to close it — grounded in lived experience, with a belief that the best technology should work for everyone, not just those it was designed around.

I'm currently developing an accessibility-focused iOS/iPadOS app that uses real-time computer vision and on-device ML — because the best assistive tech shouldn't require an internet connection or compromise on speed.

At the AIIS Lab under Dr. Thanos at Fresno State, I contribute to ongoing AI research at the intersection of language models and generative media. As an IT Intern at Fowler USD, I refine their eVal_V3 — a PHP/MySQL evaluation system used district-wide.

NSF USHER Scholar  ·  CS Club Event Coordinator  ·  Bilingual — English & Spanish  ·  Open to AI/ML internships and research roles.

Education

Where I study.

Fresno State

California State University, Fresno

Bachelor of Science — Computer Science  ·  Aug 2024 – May 2028  ·  GPA 3.2

Activities: USHER Computer Science Program (NSF)  ·  CS Club Event Coordinator
Relevant Coursework: Data Structures  ·  Computer Architecture  ·  OOP
Track: AI Engineering  ·  2024 Catalog

Experience

Where I've contributed.

Apr 2026
Present

Project & Research Lead — F3 Orchard Challenge

F3 Innovate  ·  Satellite-Based Orchard Stress Mapping  ·  Fresno County, CA

Leading a team in F3 Innovate's applied data challenge, building time-series vegetation stress models from publicly available satellite imagery. Responsible for dataset pipeline, model architecture, and team coordination across the full project lifecycle.

NDVI/NDMI/NDRESatellite Imagery PythonTeam Lead
Mar 2026
Present

IT Intern

Fowler Unified School District  ·  Internship  ·  Fowler, CA  ·  On-site

Refined eVal_V3, a PHP/MySQL employee evaluation system deployed district-wide, supporting role-based access control and real-time autosave across 9 evaluation form types. Refactored and standardized role-based form logic across all 9 PHP files, ensuring consistent behavior for admin and employee roles. Audited and cleaned district databases by identifying and removing unused email accounts, reducing attack surface and improving security posture.

PHPMySQL CybersecurityRole-Based Auth IT Infrastructure
Fall 2025
Present

Event Coordinator Officer

Computer Science Club  ·  Fresno State

Organizing technical workshops, networking events, and community programming for the CS student body at Fresno State.

LeadershipEvent Planning
Fall 2025
Present

Undergraduate Research Assistant

AIIS Lab  ·  Fresno State  ·  Dr. Thanos  ·  Hibiki-AI Project

Joined the Hibiki-AI project in its early planning phase, focusing on two technical threads: the identity layer for a multi-user web-based LLM interface, and the feasibility of real-time deepfake avatar generation. Mapped authentication approaches, compared implementation tradeoffs, and contributed directly to architecture decisions that shaped the system's early design.

LLM TrainingAuth Architecture Generative AITechnical Planning
Nov 2025
Dec 2025

Team Member — F3 Frostbite Challenge

F3 Innovate  ·  UC San Diego  ·  National Data Platform  ·  Honorable Mention

Competed in a 21-day national applied AI challenge, building short-term frost risk forecasting models from 15 years of hourly CIMIS weather data across 18 California stations. Placed top 8 among 11 teams competing against top universities nationwide. Credential: F3i-FRFC-2025-012.

Machine LearningPython Brier ScoreTime-Series
Jun 2024
Aug 2025

AI & Cybersecurity Instructor / Academic Tutor

California State University, Fresno  ·  Seasonal  ·  1 yr 3 mos

Instructed 50–60 students across two summers at the WITH-Cyber AI Camp in cybersecurity fundamentals, ML concepts, and embedded systems — scaling year over year. Led hands-on Raspberry Pi 5 builds integrating cameras and microphones. Designed and executed model training exercises in facial and audio recognition, guiding students through full ML pipelines from data collection to inference.

Machine LearningRaspberry Pi 5 Computer VisionCybersecurity Embedded Systems
2024
Present

NSF USHER Scholar

National Science Foundation  ·  Fresno State

Selected through the USHER Computer Science Program as an NSF Scholar at Fresno State, supporting undergraduate research in computing and engineering.

NSFResearch Scholar

Research

What I research.

Primary  ·  Active  ·  2026 – Present

Relay — Accessibility AI Research

Sole Researcher & Engineer

Identified a critical AI accessibility gap: physical kiosks remain unreachable for full-time power wheelchair users. Built a working Python prototype (OpenCV, PyTorch, Tesseract OCR) achieving live annotated camera feeds at 1920×1080 with real-time text detection and overlay pipeline. Conducting ongoing user-centered research grounded in lived experience as a person with SMA Type 2 to evaluate how AI-driven assistive tools affect daily independence and societal participation. Designing and building an iOS/iPadOS deployment targeting App Store release — free forever to ensure equitable access.

Computer VisionOn-Device AI User-Centered ResearchiOS/iPadOS Accessibility

Active  ·  April 2026 – Present

F3 Orchard Stress Mapping

Project & Research Lead  ·  F3 Innovate

Empirical satellite data analysis using NDVI, NDMI, and NDRE vegetation indices to map orchard stress patterns in the Central Valley. Findings directly inform land use and food security decisions affecting rural farming communities.

Satellite ImageryNDVI/NDMI/NDRE Time-Series Analysis

Research  ·  Fall 2025 – Present

Hibiki-AI — AIIS Lab

Undergraduate Research Assistant  ·  Dr. Thanos

Hibiki-AI sits at an unusual boundary: can a generative AI system authentically represent a real person's voice, appearance, and knowledge? My research focused on the infrastructure that makes that possible — what a secure identity layer for an LLM-driven platform requires, and how real-time avatar generation can be integrated responsibly. The open questions around identity, consent, and fidelity in generative systems are ones I'm still thinking through.

LLMGenerative AI Identity ArchitectureAuth Systems

Research Interest  ·  Active

AI Inclusion & Responsible Systems

Independent Research Direction

Most AI systems are designed without the people they most affect in the room. I'm interested in the structural question behind that: how do deployment decisions, benchmark choices, and training data shape who a system works for — and who it silently excludes? Responsible AI, to me, isn't a checklist. It's an engineering constraint that should inform every design decision from the start.

Responsible AIAI Fairness Deployment EthicsInclusive Design

Projects

Things I've built.

Active  ·  In Development

Relay

Nothing is out of reach.

An iOS/iPadOS accessibility app built from lived experience as a full-time power wheelchair user. Powered entirely by on-device computer vision and AI — because accessibility shouldn't be compromised by an internet connection or slowed down by latency. Free, forever.

Built with Swift, CoreML, and on-device computer vision.

RELAY
── ── ── ──
── ── ── ──
─────────
Active  ·  April 2026 – Present

F3 Orchard Challenge

F3 Innovate  ·  Fresno County, CA  ·  Project & Research Lead

Leading a team in F3 Innovate's satellite-based orchard stress mapping challenge. Building time-series models from publicly available satellite data using NDVI, NDMI, and NDRE vegetation indices across Fresno County orchards. Responsible for dataset pipeline, model architecture, and team coordination.

NDVI/NDMI/NDRESatellite Imagery JupyterPythonTeam Lead
Active  ·  Mar 2026

eVal_V3

District-Wide Employee Evaluation System  ·  Fowler USD

PHP/MySQL web application for employee evaluations deployed district-wide. Role-based access control across 9 form types, real-time autosave, and standardized form logic for admin and employee roles.

PHPMySQL Role-Based Auth
Honorable Mention  ·  Dec 2025

F3 Frostbite Challenge

F3 Innovate  ·  UC San Diego  ·  National Data Platform

Short-term frost risk forecasting ML models trained on 15 years of hourly weather data from 18 CIMIS stations across California. Probabilistic temperature and frost threshold predictions evaluated using Brier Score and calibration metrics. Placed top 8 among 11 teams, competing against top universities nationwide — 6-person team, 21 days, end-to-end: data collection, preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation.

PythonMachine Learning Data ScienceBrier Score
Research  ·  Fall 2025 – Present

Hibiki-AI

AIIS Lab  ·  Fresno State  ·  Dr. Thanos

A university research project asking whether AI can preserve human testimony at scale. Hibiki-AI combines large language models with real-time deepfake avatar technology to create interactive encounters with AI reconstructions of historical figures — starting with World War II survivors. I contributed to the identity system design and generative pipeline architecture during the project's foundational phase.

LLMGenerative AI Auth SystemsDeepfake Avatars

What's Next

What comes next.

iOS  ·  iPadOS  ·  App Store  ·  Free Forever

Relay, shipping

An iOS/iPadOS accessibility app built entirely on on-device AI — no internet required, no speed compromised. Accessibility should be a given, not a workaround. I'm building it free, forever, from lived experience as a full-time power wheelchair user. The App Store is the finish line.

Research  ·  Ongoing

On-Device ML

Continuing to push the boundary of what runs entirely on-device. I'm researching CoreML optimization, model quantization, and efficient inference pipelines — the engineering that makes real-time AI viable without the cloud.

CoreMLPyTorchQuantization

Research  ·  Active Interest

CV for Access

Investigating how computer vision can reconstruct physical environments accessibly — from inaccessible public interfaces to real-world wayfinding — and what it means to build perception systems from the ground up on lived experience.

Computer VisionOCRScene Understanding

Research  ·  Exploring

Multimodal AI

Exploring how language models and vision systems can be unified to reason across modalities — text, images, and physical context — and what that unlocks for assistive and real-world intelligence applications.

LLMsVision-LanguageReasoning

Career  ·  Target: Summer 2027

ML Engineering

Building toward an AI/ML Engineering role where research meets production — designing systems that are fast, responsible, and built to last. Closing gaps in PyTorch, Linear Algebra, and systems-level ML every week.

Systems MLAI EngineeringProduction AI

Licenses & Certifications

What I've earned.

F3 Innovate  ·  Dec 2025

Frost Risk Forecasting Data Challenge — Certificate of Participation

F3 Innovate

Credential ID  F3i-FRFC-2025-012

Machine LearningData Analysis
Fresno State  ·  Nov 2025

Intermediate Cybersecurity Certificate Course

Fresno State — Department of Computer Science

Issued Nov 2025

CybersecurityNetwork Security
Fresno State  ·  May 2025

Beginner Cybersecurity Certificate Course

Fresno State — Department of Computer Science

Issued May 2025

CybersecurityNetwork Security

Stack

What I work with.

Languages

PythonC++ SwiftPHP JavaJavaScript

AI / ML

PyTorchOpenCV CoreMLpandas TesseractVision (Apple)MediaPipe

iOS / Apple

SwiftUIAVFoundation CoreBluetoothXcode

Tools & Platforms

React / ViteMySQL GitRaspberry Pi 5 VercelJupyter

Cybersecurity

Network SecurityCryptography Incident ResponseThreat Analysis

Languages (Spoken)

English — Native Spanish — Native

Let's connect.

Open to AI/ML internships, research collaborations, and conversations about machine learning, computer vision, responsible AI, and building technology that works for everyone. If you're working on something meaningful at the intersection of AI and access — I'd like to hear about it.

Resume Download PDF → Email epineda1006@gmail.com → LinkedIn eric-pineda-ramirez → GitHub epineda1006 →