Leader and Collaborator, Senior Principal Engineer	Badges of Recognition - Optum / UHG, AI/ML Teacher and Inventor	High Performance Computing (HPC) Development Expert in Science/Medicine/Engineering using AI/ML

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Over 36 years experience leading development and architecture. Past 10 years as Director of Applications Development, Director of Clinical Architecture, and Senior Principal Engineer focusing on AI/ML architecture, design, development, and delivery of HPC and cloud applications for health care.

Inventor of multiple health care solutions with patents in field of AI/ML Programmatic Determinations with Decision Trees, Cognitive AI For Data Ordering, and Intelligent RAG Based Patient Education. Hands on development leader for major healthcare apps in clinical areas of applied AI for Health Care, Assessment, NER of Clinical Terminology, Care Planning, Family Health, Intelligent Triage, Behavioral Health Prior Authorization, Medical Inpatient/Outpatient Charts and SMART/FHIR EMR Integrated Apps, Skilled Nursing Facility Recommendation, Provider specialist matchmaking, appointment making, mobile integration, and recommendation systems for Clinical business and technology. Analytics Leader and Technology Owner for AI/ML Apps at scale and owner of MLRB/RUAI delivery as analytics leader on multiple projects and programs.

Former President/CEO of Evolvable Corporation. History

I am a technical leader and owner for two assistive AI/ML products for patients and providers:

1. "SympleNote & Symptom Smart" - AI led medical interview and differential diagnosis for triage, appointments and level of care recommendation. Medical KB self care content educates patients, and integrates with Epic Mychart using SMART/FHIR and Azure microservices, serving three Care Delivery Organization (CDO) networks in WA, MA, and National West 12 state regions.
2. "EasyCheck" - Patient Check In kiosk, mobile and conversational application called , an intelligent bot application with Mobile app, Web, IVR and SMS capabilities. EMR integrated mobile app optimizes patient check in process using EMR integrated health care appointment notification and management of check in information. Used by CA, and serves location checkin intake for over 400 locations and over 48k patient appointments per month.

As an AI teacher with my "AI Zero to Hero" course and annual global Hackathon leader, I have helped train over 3000 engineers on using AI for health care. I also ran Optum's Global Hackathon 2019-2022 annual event with 2500+ engineers. With my weekly AI Zero to Hero class for Optum Technology University I have taught Generative AI, Streamlit, Python, Gradio, Huggingface, ML Model Design and Build, Data Engineering, and advanced Python development using AI Pair Programming (AIPP). As a teacher of AI through my hands on development approach I achieved a Net Promoter Score (NPS) - 97.7% Promoters by helping others learn to build AI apps quickly using the latest AI techniques. **

1. 🔧 Systems Infrastructure & IaaS: Hardware, OS, and cloud HPC deployments using GPU, CUDA, Python, RL, and M-LLMs for ML training and inference. Automated triage, workflow design and integration with ServiceNow and Qualtrics for customer evals.
2. 💻 Software Cloud Engineering & MLOps: Cloud infrastructure, ML frameworks, and automation using MS Azure, GCP, AWS, HuggingFace, and Github, Deep Research and Reasoning pipeline development. Azure ACR, ACAE, Cosmos, App Insights, Kubernetes, KEDA, DAPR, Docker.
3. 🤖 Machine Learning AI: Large–scale architectures, distributed training, and inference using torch, transformers, tensorflow, RLHF, reward and regret modeling and evals, performance metrics, transformers, RAG and diffusers, streamlit and gradio.
4. 📊 Data & Knowledge Engineering: Data processing, analytics, and governance using Azure CosmosDB, vector search, pandas, arrow, warehousing, BI tools, Airflow, Spark, Kafka, python async IO, visualization, anomaly detection and streaming.
5. 🔒 Security & Compliance: Security operations, compliance, and system hardening, attack detection, simulation, python automation, incident response, AI ServiceNow Incidents and Problems, risk assessment, vulnerability mgmt, security architecture for ML, privacy and compliance.
6. 👥 Leadership & Collaboration: Strategic leadership and team management coordinating engineering, design, research, platform roadmaps, cross team collaboration on HPC resources, data teams, and product strategy and delivery.
7. 📱 FullStack UI Mobile Dev: Mobile and web app development with ML integration, AI automation, MSGraph with Entra ID and msal, CICD automation with Azure DevOps, github actions, Docker, Terraform, REST APIs, AI chat, iOS, Android, Linux, Native android, webassembly, TS, React, GPT and M-LLMs (Multi-Modal) as agents. DataDog and SauceLabs used for cross platform device tests and production video study for accessibility.
8. 🎯 Specialized Domains: Healthcare & Clinical, Behavioral Health, Advanced CV, VR Piloted Robotics and Telepresence, HPC, and AI quantization, FinTech automation, quantum programming, RLHF, MLAgents, torch low level gen and diffusion.
9. 📢 Community OpenSource: Community engagement, documentation, strategic collaboration. Super-producer building demos, teaching, training large business and technical audiences, engagement on social, documentation and examples in markdown, mermaid, and code. Eye for art and creativity making technology accessible for all.

• HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/awacke1
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-wacker-1823885/
• Github: https://github.com/AaronCWacker/ Arctic Code Vault contributor for Machine Learning: https://github.com/AaronCWacker?achievement=arctic-code-vault-contributor&tab=achievements
• Research Interests: Clinical, Medical and Behavioral Mixture of Experts (MoE), AGI and ML Agent Pipelines, Ambient IoT AI for Mobile, Behavioral Cognitive and Memory Personalization AI, Clinical Medical and Nursing AI, Genomics AI, DeepRL with MLAgents and Torch, Transformers, RLHF with Evaluation AI, Self Rewarding AI, GAN Gaming GAIL AR VR XR and Simulation AI, Graph Ontology KR KE AI, Languages and NLP AI, Quantum Compute GPU TPU NPU AI, Omni-modal Vision Image Document and Audio/Video AI, Instruct Data Engineering, GPT Claude Llama Deepseek, Human Feedback Systems and Datasets, and Deep Research Evaluation for Arxiv Paper informed invention moving from idea to working app automation and code interpretation and execution.

My own growth in AI development productivity has increased from up to ten programs per year (2021), to 200 per year in 2022, and over 578 total within Q1 2023 showing over 100x increase in productivity by using and teaching AI pair programming and learning techniques.

AI/ML platform technologies I am familiar with include Huggingface, Transformers, Keras, Jupyter, Scikit-learn, OpenCV, Fast.ai, GPT-3, DataRobot, Azure, Torch, Tensorflow, Streamlit, Gradio, Docker, Terraform, Python, Github and VSCode.

With product engineering and delivery I have led delivery of at least three large AI oriented projects per year since 2018 including notable successes such as 12 IP disclosure submissions with one successful patent covering 32 features for automating prior auth determinations using decision trees and AI, also serving as a patent mentor with 3 Patents in Artificial Intelligence and Clinical Healthcare Process.

1. In 2018 I led a team to create and deliver a SNF predictor in ICUE application with >60k users. Completed in 30 days.
2. In 2019 I helped design and develop python AIML based Outpatient ML model. Completed auto approval automation for OP prior authorization decisions.
3. In 2020-2022 I developed AIIP, an Inpatient chart educated ML pipeline that reads large PDF charts (200+ pages), and Inpatient prior authorization case history assisting Medical Director Review process.
4. In 2020-2024 I developed multiple AI/ML pipelines using Docker, Azure, ACAE, ACR, Kubernetes, Github and KEDA developing over 6 apps per year.
5. In 2025 I am designing and developing ML models for Inpatient using DistillKit, MergeKit, Spectrum, torch, transformers, python, Azure, CosmosDB NoSQL, streamlit, gradio, and Docker.

  1. Patent: **Intelligent Data Recommender for Data Source Recommendation with Cognitive Architecture as Expert System**  and led development of a Cognitive AI Intelligent Dataset Ordering tool to optimize data acquisition process which completed in 2024.
        - U.S. Patent Appl. No. 18/817,704, entitled: “Systems and Methods for Using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Model to Route Data.”
        - (aka Data Source Recommendation with Cognitive Architecture as Expert System).
        - Presented at Patent Review Board where it was unanimously approved.  I serve as a patent mentor.
        - Intelligent Data Recommender with 20 Cognitive AI claims.
  2. Patent: **PROGRAMMATIC DETERMINATIONS USING DECISION TREES GENERATED FROM RELATIONAL DATABASE ENTRIES**: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search/resultAssignment?id=51748-479
  3. Patent: **MACHINE-LEARNED MODEL ARCHITECTURE FOR GENERATING INDIVIDUAL-SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS**
  4. 14 Total Innovation Disclosures / Patent Submissions Covering:
           1. Problem addressed by the invention
           2. How it solves the problem
           3. How it works in documented method steps including 1. Definitions, 2. Method Steps, 3. Inputs, 4. Entity Specifications, 5. Actors and 6. Figures
        - Patent mentor on Patent Review Board coaching and guiding creation of AI patent for patient education and instruction with clinical terminologies, controlled vocabularies and ontologies.

• Individuals this year in weekly one on ones and also large forum presentations in AI development.
• Co-Lead of Data Science Guild (DSG), a community of Data Scientists, Engineers, Business and Product leaders including many Clinician Leaders
• Led large scale demonstration and daredevil demonstration sessions of how to create apps using AI pair programming to community of over 3000+ people receiving most video views, replays, and follow ups.
• Led State of the Art (SOTA) based innovative demo Sessions setting record of 23 app demonstration walkthroughs of AI in an hour demonstrating AI Pair Programming - increasing development speed and quality by 100x:
  • Prompting with Mixture of Experts, Multiagent Systems, and Self Reward from research AI ensembles and pipelines.
  • Example Classroom Syllabus of the 23 AI Demos: https://huggingface.co/Prompting-MoE-MaS-SeR
  • https://optum.video.uhc.com/media/DSG%20Demo%20Day-20240724%20-%20Huggingface%20Transformers%20and%2023%20Demonstrations%20of%20AI/1_t3ximdhj
  • Holder of most in demand / watched video sessions. Consistently in top 3 presenters throughout Data Science Guild (DSG).
• Weekly one on one mentor and coach leading meetings with development engineers, and individualized teaching and mentoring in AI at scale.
  • Collaboration with Optum Pro team, Enterprise Security, and AI app development.
  • Large forum presentations and Talks for AI:
    • UHC Tech Forum: Multiple large sessions on AI in Action and By The Rules for UHC TL&D Days
    • Presented to large forum (Prep 4/3 - 5/1 with trainers, Two day sessions at Learning and Development days covering Onshore and Offshore)
    • ACC Champions - Large forum presentation
    • Cohosted Mentor Spotlight for Education and Mentorship - Career Stories
    • TLCP and AI Mentorship and group Presentations for TLCP on Patent Review Board, Innovation Disclosure and State of the Art (SOTA) Machine Learning.
    • Leading Lessons OTU - AI, Leadership Learning and Development for Teaching Tracts: Social Learning Influencer, Collaborator Role, Domains of AI & Data Science, Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Data Engineering - NPS Promoter Feedback sample verbatims from large forum classes and sessions:
    • Excellent tour of the latest greatest in AI through all your work you've created on HuggingFace (followed) Thankyou Aaron!
    • Awesome as always!
    • Thankyou very much, Aaron! You introduced latest AI capabilities in many aspects. It is Really helpful.
    • That was an amazing session, I remember I had that during my TDP Bootcamp last year and I was so much fascinated with the examples that Aaron walked over in Zero to Hero session!
    • Amazing as always Aaron! Your depth of knowledge is very inspiring
    • Awesome Demos.. thanks again!
    • This was so cool thank you Aaron!
    • You making me want to figure out how to make VSCode for my work computer
    • Awesome presentation as always
    • Excellent technical skills and wonderful presentation! Thank you very much.
    • Aaron - We love your passion for technology. Thank you for sharing all the amazing things. You are a genius (no wonder an amazing inventor & a patent mentor). Thank you for all you do.
    • Thank you Wacker, Aaron C - I find your demo very detailed and easy to try out. Thanks a lot
    • Thank you very much for another fantastic presentation and discussion.

• Developed and released daily 6 applications on Azure Container Apps using VSCode, Docker, ACR, ACAE, Python, Streamlit, Gradio, FastAPI, NodeJS, React, Typescript 1.📊AI💡Service Now 2.🗣️AI🤝NPS 3.GPT-4o📩Doc🗣️💬VoiceChat 4. AI Claims 5. AI Infoguard for PHI PII Detection and Deidentification using Presidio 6. AI CI/CD for Product Delivery Acceleration

 1. Technology Roadmap
 2. Business and Technology Architecture
 3. Technical Issues Research and Remediation including Production Product Support
 4. Hands on Python, C#, Java, Javascript, C/C++, Reactive, and Mobile Development
 5. Strategy, Approach, and Plan for Product Growth and Expansion
 6. Technical Owner for two large clinical health care applications integrated with EMRs including Epic, MyChart and Touchworks/IDW.
 7. Security Platform fixes for products using AI to refactor and build defensive posture with over 80 engineered solutions that address Defender identified CVS potential issues.
 8. Weekly meetings for Leadership and Collaboration with business and product stakeholders for SympleNote and EasyCheck
 9. Onboarding team members, lead transition of consulting teams, and onboarding of new global teams and product owners coaching and mentoring and assisting with access and learning.
 10. Cloud Technology Owner for multiple Azure based large scale applications and Contributor managing access, feature adds, and refactoring for growth, security and scaling.  Supporting global advantage offshore teams and onshore business stateholders.
 11. Delivery of technology development changes, PowerBI analytics, NPS, Qualtrics, and Servicenow ownership as well as Secure management with additions and enhancements, Azure changes, security changes, and transitions of resources.

1. AI Development and Shipping - Product development at Scale and Speed
2. Presentation and face to face coordination between interdisciplinary teams. Ownership of refactoring and feature updates with Optum Global Advantage teams.
3. Engagement with variety of business and technology stakeholders and product constituents.

1. Reduce complexity of what we share with customers, Analytics Leadership in Machine Learning Evaluation and Review with advice to simplify and clarify.
2. Mitigating burnout amongst high performers by credit making and leadership in design for quality and efficiency.
3. Vision for transforming apps with AI from high cost / high complexity applications with aging overly complex architecture and discouraged technologies to simplified, fully AI automated CI/CD DevOps and MLOps flows. Developing vision and carefully articulated ideal state architectures with compelling CBA factors.
4. Distinguished Engineer accreditation.

1. Being an optimal conduit between onshore product needs and global product design, development and delivery.
2. Driving initiatives in AI across to solve payer, provider, and patient problems using Data Engineering and AI/MLOps at scale. Align through partnerships with our UAIS platform.
3. Driving product evolution for AI based apps and implementing them across product markets to share in value. Gaining cross department leadership buy in.
4. Leadership and Collaboration vision at VP/C level leadership. Collaborate with MLRB and RUAI teams for AI safety, legal, privacy and compliance on how we use AI.
5. Deep understanding of how to craft and live up to value statements, CBA's and cost optimization through AI CI/CD and MLOps automation, and performance evaluation and measurement.
6. Present and tell clear product quality and efficiency stories with strong CBA's which daily review pain of problems, joy of solutions, with product press releases.

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Score Additional Question: Why did you attend this training/event? Do you feel this course/event was effective in meeting the stated learning objectives? Please share your comments regarding this learning experience:

1. 10 New Skills or Technology Agree very interesting!
2. 10 New Skills or Technology, Refresh Skills Strongly Agree This class is excellent, Aaron provided the necessary tools and now we have to experience the tools and apply them to our ideas.
3. 10 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree
4. 10 New Skills or Technology, Refresh Skills Strongly Agree Aaron is amazing! his demo is on point, and he always update his material! You consistently learn something new with every session that you attend! And love that Aaron is sharing his 30 years of experience and kepe improving our data culture! Thank you again Aaron!
5. 10 Recommended/Required by Manager Agree Great examples and easy to follow. Might be a little quick for people without much experience, but having the sessions recorded gives them a chance to look back if needed.
6. 10 Recommended by Co-Worker Strongly Agree
7. 10 Refresh Skills Strongly Agree Aaron is a great presenter and teacher. Both classes so far have been top notch. Thank you very much for motivating me to learn hugging face.
8. 10 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree really well explained session ! Would love to attend and explore more classes by Aaron !
9. 10 New Skills or Technology Agree It appears it met the objective, but the class moved so fast I was unable to keep up with watching and doing at the same time so learning and copying/pasting examples run was not possible for me. I look forward to going through the video and watching more intently and following the examples to learn more. It appears to be thorough and something I will definitely be able to use.
10. 10 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree Like to participate and contribute to UHG AI platform models and learn more
11. 10 New Skills or Technology, Recommended/Required by Manager Agree Although the main goal was to show how easy and fast it is to build AI apps, there were many dependencies and technical skills referenced and/or required for deeper knowledge (ChatGPT prompts, Python, GitHub, Streamlit, MarkDown). With inspired passion, I'll now go learn and practice those skills so I can apply them to building new apps with HuggingFace. I needed to watch the replay with frequent pauses, to allow it all to sink in.
12. 10 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree Thank you, Aaron, for the great session. Aaron was very detailed and clear while presenting the information.
13. 10 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree Amazing initiative.
14. 10 New Skills or Technology, Refresh Skills Strongly Agree It was excellent , effective and good as a starter to get into AI
15. 10 Refresh Skills Strongly Agree
16. 10 New Skills or Technology, Refresh Skills Strongly Agree Learned how quickly use hugging face to create AI apps at great speed
17. 10 Other (just trying to learn more about huggingface) Strongly Agree
18. 9 New Skills or Technology Agree
19. 9 Recommended/Required by Manager Agree Great class to learn more about AI models and ML. Learned more on how to make dashboards for HuggingFace and excited to learn more in the future!
20. 9 New Skills or Technology, Recommended by Co-Worker Strongly Agree Excellent session by Aaron. Got good ways and tips to improve productivity by 100x
21. 9 New Skills or Technology Strongly Agree Aaron packed into 1 hour an entire day's worth of amazing and practical content for me to watch again -- at a much slower pace so I can absorb and learn and practice. THANK YOU!
22. 9 New Skills or Technology Agree
23. 9 New Skills or Technology, Recommended by Co-Worker Agree