From coding in grade school to writing rap lyrics, meet David Koelle, Principal Software Engineer, and Director of Engineering, Human-Centered AI division. Dave is fueled by curiosity, creative problem-solving, and the “human” aspects of being an engineer.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your background.
A: I grew up in the New Haven area in Connecticut, a small town called North Branford with some fascinating history. For example, it has had the longest single-faced trap rock quarry in the world, and in the 1870s was known as the Christmas Card capital. It was a great town for growing up, with lots of woods to explore and farms to enjoy.
I moved up to Massachusetts when I attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the mid-90s. Interestingly, when I was there working on my Major Qualifying Project (MQP), which is basically a senior thesis, my professor on the project was doing some consulting for this research company in Cambridge called Charles River Analytics. When I first heard about what the company did, I thought, “That’s the kind of work I want to do!”
But there wasn’t an opportunity when I was first looking for a job. Instead, in my first job, I worked on air traffic control systems at Raytheon (now RTX), then IBM, then on to a start-up, and for a while Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a textbook publisher, which isn’t exactly a company you’d associate with tech, but I joined the group of a recently acquired start-up in the early days of e-textbooks.
While I was at Houghton Mifflin, I received an email from a recruiter at Charles River Analytics, asking if I’d want to interview for a job. I thought, “What?! That’s just where I want to be!” I interviewed a couple times and then I accepted what I called at the time, and still today, my dream job.
Q: Have you always been interested in programming?
A: I have an aunt and uncle who have been inspirations for me. They got my family our first computer when I was in second grade. That’s when I started to do a little BASIC programming, learning a lot on my own.
I remember in fifth grade we had a computer club at school. This was back in the days when you would have one machine for the whole building. During high school I kept up with programming, writing my own music and drawing programs.
This is also when I had my first “real” job. While attending high school, I worked for a medical lab as the assistant to the systems administrator, writing real programs. The most significant tracked when the phlebotomists needed to go to patients’ homes for home blood draws.
Q: How did this interest lead to your current work in autonomy and intelligent systems?
A: It was around this time, in high school working at the medical lab, that I recall picking up a book titled Artificial Life, by Steven Levy. This was a nascent subfield of artificial intelligence that is still going strong today. It is about people creating systems that seem to exhibit lifelike behaviors. At the time I thought that was so fascinating and it got me really interested in AI work. This planted some seeds for my present work, which involves collaborative autonomy, where multiple robots work together and anticipate each other’s needs.
Q: What does your role as Director of Engineering at Charles River encompass?
A: My role at Charles River covers a few different areas. One that I’m quite interested in is what I’d call the “human” aspects of being an engineer. How do we help you grow and thrive as an engineer, ensuring that working here makes you the best version of yourself in your craft?
“I view the day-to-day as an opportunity to do your best work. It’s focused time to make meaningful change to the world in some small way. So how do we help advance that?”
Philosophically, that mindset of constantly seeking improvement encapsulates what I think of as my role. Making sure that people who work at Charles River have opportunities to develop their career, their skills, that we’re sharing knowledge with each other, and that we’re growing into new areas effectively.
Since we’re on the leading edge of a lot of interesting science and engineering work, this is a critical question for us and one we make sure to continually ask ourselves.
Q: Do you have any advice for someone who’s looking to pursue this type of work?
A: I find, especially in those earlier years, it’s hard to come up with the “five-year plan,” knowing “this is where I’m going to be,” because the world is full of multiple opportunities that take time to discover and consider. But I think that things get a little easier over time.
I’d say for somebody starting out in their career, part of life is discovery about who you are, what is interesting to you, and what you want to do. And you’re going to have an inkling, I think, of where you want to be in general, but there are going to be all these specific directions that need to get filled in by experiences you have along the way.
I think knowing that the decisions you’re making at any point in time are the best decisions you can make with the information you have is important. Learn to trust yourself.
Q: What motivates you professionally?
A: Some of the reasons I’ve been here so long (20 years!) is that I love the work I’m doing. I feel like I’m making positive change. I’m pushing forward new ideas, new concepts that haven’t been seen before, and I especially see this in the collaborative autonomy work that I’m doing now where there are some ideas that I’m pursuing that have simply never existed.
Q: Are there any interesting fun facts about yourself?
A: I have decent rhythm and have performed custom raps in front of audiences on a few rare occasions. And once I rapped to Vanilla Ice! Dunkin’ Donuts was running an event for their new iced coffee flavors and my friend who worked at the ad agency called me up one night and said, “Dave, we’re having this promotion tomorrow at Copley Square in Boston where you change the lyrics to ‘Ice, Ice Baby’ with stuff about iced coffee, and Vanilla Ice is going to be one of the judges. Would you like to go?” And I was like, “Are you kidding?”
I spent the rest of the night writing this Dunkin’ iced coffee rap. I worked in all the different flavors. The next day I went to Copley Square and performed it. I didn’t win the competition, but I think I earned a close second.
Selected David Koelle publications, presentations and projects
Swarms: Current Research and Future Applications
Sparking System Change with System Dynamics
Collaborative Autonomy Meets the Real World
Challenges and Progress in Swarm Autonomy
Drone Swarms: A Transformational Technology
Principal Software Engineer at Charles River Analytics Co-Authors Book on Practical XMPP
