Christopher J. Tralie
Open To Work!
I am on the industry job market this fall (2025). If you could use a research scientist and/or engineer (yes, I can do both!) with expertise in signal processing (especially audio), geometry processing (especially 3D), algorithm design, and/or machine learning, drop me a line and we can chat. Click here to see a recent example of how I work/think.
Overview
I am a long time coder who's an artist/mathematician at heart, and I believe in cultivating kindness and human flourishing. Education, mentoring, and sharing ideas widely and authentically are central to my mission.
I do research in audio processing and geometry processing, mostly focused on music information retrieval, but also with some applications to medical data analysis. In all of my work, I have a strong focus on algorithm visualizations and open source software development.
I am a teacher at heart, and I was a professor for 6 years, eventually earning tenure. During that time, my teaching specialties were in CS theory (data structures, theory of computation) and CS applications (computer graphics, digital music processing, and artificial intelligence). Now I make videos on YouTube for even wider audiences.
My partner Celia Litovsky teaches in prisons (and in more typical environments) and does research in neuroscience and educational science, particularly focused on reading and literacy, but also with a long term interest in alzheimer's research. My brother James Tralie makes videos for NASA as well as various 3D art projects on the side (including my favorite application ever: Luttrell's album art).
Academic Bio Sketch
For posterity, below is an academic bio sketch of my 18 years in academia. I'm also keeping my academic CV at this link, though it's frozen in time in summer 2024 as I went up for tenure.
I received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering with a Computer Science minor at Princeton University in 2011, an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University in 2013, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from from Duke University in 2017. As a Ph.D. student, I was advised jointly by Guillermo Sapiro and John Harer, and I was funded by an NSF Graduate Fellowship. I was also member of the College Certificate in Teaching (CCT) program at Duke.
After doing a postdoc in the Math Department at Duke followed by another postdoc in the Chemical And Biomedical Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins, I began a tenure track faculty position in the Department of Mathematics And Computer Science at Ursinus College in the fall of 2019. I received tenure in 2025, and I also received the Laughlin Teaching Award that year in recognition of outstanding teaching, as nominated by students and ultimately selected by the college president to be presented at commencement with the class of 2025. Satisfied with my academic achievements at that point, I decided to step away from my role as a professor to pursue opportunities in industry, though I remain as a "research fellow," supervising undergraduate research projects as part of my Audiovisual Signal Processing (GASP) Research Group.
Other
I'd like to highlight an essay by Benjamin Kuipers on the proliferation of military funding in academia, which remains a serious problem. Related to this, I also recently wrote an essay about how the National Science Foundation (NSF) changed my life, and why we shouldn't be cutting funding to such a crucial agency.
