I'm Archie Kind, a Computer Science student at the University of Bristol with a passion for technology and the future of computing. My interests range from machine learning to embedded software development, and I am continually expanding my skills. This website shares some of my interests and things I've worked on. For a formal description of my industry experience and education please see my LinkedIn. My GitHub profile contains some projects I've developed.
During my time at university, I have invested significant effort in extending myself through coursework, going far beyond the requirements. One notable project was a C program for converting and compressing image files using a custom file format. By employing 2D run-length encoding and various self-developed optimizations, I achieved a formidable compression ratio of 6.03. Another significant project involved designing a hardware implementation of the PRESENT encryption algorithm. I extended this project by creating separate combinatorial, sequential, and pipelined designs while conducting extensive research into Verilog efficiency.
As the Software Team Lead for Bristol HyPower Rocketry during the 2024/25 development cycle, I am guiding the development of embedded systems for our rocket. We are competing in the European Rocketry Challenge, hosted by the Portuguese Space Agency in October, with a target apogee of 3 km. This role has deepened my leadership and low-level software development skills, giving me valuable experience managing teams.
I've developed and am developing a variety of smaller project to extend my understanding of some topics at university. Functional programming (Haskell) presented an exciting new way of thinking, and I've been exploring the applications. One was a simulation of Conway's Game of Life which piked my curiosity about self-replicating automata. Another was a book review website which involved managing different requests to the server, interacting with a SQLite database and more. It inspired the section below.
This book was very impactful on my way of thinking. Beyond the RL concepts it covered, it pushed me to understand what is meant by an "agent", how state and action spaces could be represented to the agent and more. It also broadened my view of machine learning as something beyond the Transformer architecture and backpropagation algorithms which are so common today. I also found the discussion linking RL to psychology and neuroscience fascinating.
I found this collection of short stories to be a great way to unwind from academics. Each story was uniquely interesting, both in terms of content and structure, with very thought provoking ideas. If I had to pick a favourite, "72 Letters" was a well paced story, made especially gripping as you tried to decipher Chiang's intentions throughout. The combination with the supernatural with the setting in modern history added intrigue and furthered the story's impact.
If you'd like to connect, feel free to email me at archiekind1@gmail.com. You can also explore my work on GitHub or connect with me on LinkedIn