I’m Justin Waltrip, a data scientist and software engineer with a passion for leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to address real-world challenges. My academic journey began at Johns Hopkins University, where I pursued dual majors in computer science and applied mathematics, laying a solid foundation for my career in technology.

At Cognistx, I spearheaded the technical development of SQUARE, an advanced enterprise question answering system that integrates extractive QA with retrieval augmented generation (RAG). My work involved automating the extraction of critical information from complex documents and designing a robust, multi-tenant serverless AWS architecture to support our solutions. Furthermore, I led the development of an evaluation framework for prompt engineering to enhance our RAG model’s effectiveness. Outside of natural language processing, my tenure also included leading the MoleculeAI project, where we utilized graph neural networks to revolutionize the drug discovery process, and a product placement project that used diffusion models to generate realistic looking backgrounds for retail items.

Beyond my professional endeavors, I’m an advocate for open-source software and continuously explore new technologies. I’m currently developing a local-first recipe management system that I plan to open-source. As a Linux enthusiast, I enjoy experimenting with NixOS among other distributions. When I step away from the keyboard, I find joy in playing ultimate frisbee, backpacking, and waterskiing, embracing the balance between my digital and outdoor worlds.