I’m a self-motivated engineer, currently based in Zürich, with a knack for computers and electronics. I have hands-on experience in hardware-aware software development, especially in areas like machine learning, autonomous robotics, and embedded systems. Adapting to the situation, I can be a strong team player or a one-person army.
Contact
Email info{at}ugurcancakal.com
Website https://ugurcancakal.github.io/
LinkedIn
ugurcancakal
GitHub
ugurcancakal
Location
Zürich,
Switzerland
Work
SynSense AG
ML Algorithms and Applications Engineer
2022-07-01
— Present
Developed applications and user facing APIs for neuromorphic chips
- Led the implementation of application software support for digital neuromorphic Xylo, and mixed-signal neuromorphic Dynap-SE2 chips. Offline simulation, hardware-in-the loop, SNN training and mapping, sim-to-real.
- Trained and deployed application prototypes targeting various Xylo chip families, some of which are human activity detection with IMU signals, and background noise classification with audio signals.
- Spearheaded the development and maintenance of Rockpool, an open-source python package for developing signal processing applications with spiking neural networks. Currently ranking as the first contributor (~2,000 commits).
- Composed comprehensive user manuals and tutorials and delivered presentations to stakeholders.
Software Engineer (Intern)
2021-06-01
— 2022-07-01
Started as an internship, continued as a master thesis
- Modeled the jax-backend time efficient custom hardware simulator, simulating VLSI dynamics of Dynap-SE2 chip.
- Improved BPTT training pipeline execution time from 10s of days to 10s of minutes with just-in-time compilation.
- Implemented non-uniform quantization, custom gradient computation, mismatch simulation algorithms to solve hardware mapping problem for analog mixed signal Dynap-SE2 processor.
- Developed an efficient application deployment pipeline which significantly reduced the required effort for an application development: from an entire PhD thesis to an internship project.
GOHM
Machine Learning Engineer (Contract)
2021-01-01
— 2021-04-01
The first attempt to be a freelancer
- Engineered a deep convolutional neural network application from scratch, enabling efficient processing of low-dimensional RF signals to detect analog device fingerprints for edge inference on the NVIDIA Jetson board.
Volunteer
METU Amateur Photography Club
Chair
2015-01-01
— 2017-01-01
Analog photography, thoughts and discussions
- Organized several workshops, exhibitions, artists talks and tenders.
Education
Middle East Technical University
2019-09-01
— 2022-08-22
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Masters (3.79/4.0 GPA)
Courses
- Neurocomputers and Deep Learning
- Applied Parallel Programming on GPU
- Artificial Intelligence
Middle East Technical University
2014-09-01
— 2019-06-01
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bachelors (3.28/4.0 GPA)
Courses
- Microprocessors
- Computer Architecture I & II
- Computational Intelligence
- Machine Learning
Skills
Python
Object-Oriented Programming and Test Driven DevelopmentC++
Optimization and Embedded SystemsProgramming
C, CUDA, Verilog, and ARM AssemblyMachine Learning
PyTorch, Jax, TensorFlow, and sckit-learnSoftware
unit testing, Git, and CI&CDLanguages
English
C1
Turkish
Native
German
B1