Jake Frischmann
CV

Research

Questions I'm pursuing, and space to pursue more.

I like research most when it has to survive real implementation: hardware that stalls, policies that lie to you, systems that fail in front of users. I'm always open to joining labs, collaborations, and projects where careful building is valued over polished claims.

Temporary stand-in photograph (the Eiffel Tower at dusk). Replace with a figure from the work.
Temporary stand-in. A hardware or lab still belongs here.

Three threads

  • Neuroinformatics

    Pipelines that turn preschool neuroimaging and day-long home audio into analysis-ready datasets. LEAD Lab is the anchor.

    See LEAD Lab

  • Embodied systems

    Hardware bringup, cable-driven actuation, underwater sensing, and simulation built in parallel with the bench. SpiRob and BioBOT are the anchors.

    Open the case study

  • Learning systems

    Self-play reinforcement learning, search, and policy evaluation when rewards are sparse and every placement is permanent. BlokusDuo is the anchor.

    Read the paper

Language, Experience, and Development (LEAD) Lab · University of Maryland

Temporary stand-in photograph (a restaurant interior). Replace with a figure from the work.

Turning preschool recordings into datasets the studies can use

SLIDE and PLANES preschool language and neural development studies. I process fNIRS/fMRI, build ASR/NLP pipelines for day-long home recordings, and fuse multimodal streams into BIDS-compliant datasets.

Recent work

  • Open the case study

    Neuroinformatics for preschool language and neural development: motion-corrected imaging, day-long audio pipelines, and BIDS-compliant multimodal fusion.

Role

Undergraduate research assistant · Dr. Rachel Romeo · Jun 2026 – present

NASA Neutral Buoyancy Lab - BioBOT · University of Maryland

Temporary stand-in photograph (a brick archway). Replace with a figure from the work.

Sensing and autonomy that survive the pool

NASA-sponsored underwater robot. I own sensing and autonomy software in ROS/ROS2, tying simulation to structured in-water pool trials.

Recent work

  • Open the case study

    Underwater sensing and autonomy for a NASA-sponsored robot at UMD Neutral Buoyancy Lab, with simulation tied to in-water pool trials.

Role

Undergraduate researcher · 2025 – present

Zheng Research Lab · Drexel University

Temporary stand-in photograph (a flamingo chair). Replace with a figure from the work.

Staged bringup for a tendon-driven soft arm

Tendon-driven SpiRob soft manipulators in SolidWorks, staged cable control, and GPU-accelerated simulation in Isaac Gym and MuJoCo.

Recent work

  • Open the case study

    Experimental soft-robotics bringup: cable-actuated SpiRob, staged motor characterization, and parallel MuJoCo / Isaac Lab simulation.

Role

Research intern · Dr. Yue (Luna) Zheng · May 2025 – Jul 2025

Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences · Carnegie Mellon University

Temporary stand-in photograph (an outdoor table). Replace with a figure from the work.

Self-play agents, and the paper that came with them

Residential program with a 7% admit rate. I led the BlokusDuo deep RL project and was main author on the peer-reviewed PGSS Journal paper.

Recent work

  • Read the paper

    Self-play reinforcement learning on a combinatorial board game. PPO with MCTS priors and honest evaluation against fixed reference opponents.

Role

Research fellow and main author · Dr. Neil Simonetti · Summer 2024

  • Read the paper

    BlokusDuo deep reinforcement learning agents: architecture and experiments

  • Rare-allele recognition and quantum advantage

Papers and figures

If something here resonates, write to me.

If something here resonates, I'd like to hear what you're working on. I'm open to joining labs, collaborations, and projects where careful building matters more than polished claims.

Contact about research Full CV