Hi, I’m Karissa but go by Ari (a substring of the full string), and am a pure dork at heart and love all things tech (Ham radio, 3D printing, textbook reading by the fire) and of course, robotics! My son and I watch Mark Rober engineering videos for fun on the weekend, and enjoy dreaming up what project we’ll come up with next.
My path to becoming a software engineer is unique, as I started out as a Film Major at BYU. However, due to religious differences, I chose to go on a few adventures (teaching English in China and joining the Marine Corps as an Arabic Linguist), before transferring and deciding to study Computer Science. I was a nontraditional student, taking online classes for my Bachelors at UIS in Afghanistan and while having my first baby during my internship at Vulcan Wireless. I then worked at BAE Systems on signals based defense products, then at DEKA on the FEDEX delivery bot in multitarget tracking.
When COVID hit and childcare fell through, I decided to use my GI Bill to go back to school for my Masters in Applied Mathematics at Northeastern University, where I had my second baby. Upon graduating, I was lucky to find and join Third Wave Automation! They have the flexibility I was looking for in working remotely; a very supportive, smart, and interactive team; and super interesting problems in working with vehicle automation! I’m very excited to now be helping with SLAM, Localization, Obstacle Detection, and Calibration problems, and look forward to seeing our team grow!