Benjamin Wagley
Projects and Interests
Music and Audio
Music is a huge part of me and rarely will I not have some music playing. I have built up a large library of music and encourage my friends to explore their musical tastes. To listen to music in high fidelity, I have designed some speakers that can be found below.
Programming and Tech
Cars
I love older vehicles and you may see me behind the wheel of my 1989 BMW 325iS, or my 1999 Toyota Tacoma SR5 4x4.About
From the rural foothills outside Salida, Colorado, to the busy outskirts of Washington DC, I have come to know many different styles of life. Growing up in Salida, I learned life in the countryside, originally living in a small, strawbale cottage that my parents built. As a young child I grew up running through the pinon forest surrounding our home. During a portion of this time in my early life, my parents owned a small Bakery and Cafe, were I became accustom to life in a commercial kitchen.
Once I reached schooling age, a job offer brought my family to Arlington, Virginia, where I began developing an interest in Science and Technology. Curious about what exactly my father did I began to learn how to program as well as the inner workings of UNIX-based operating systems. At H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program I really became who I am, learning to manage my own life and take on responsibility. H-B also taught me to follow my passions, no matter what would stand in my way. It was during this period of my life that I began to develop interests in Music and Photography, as well honing my cooking abilities and pursue a future in Computer Science. I also participated in a Student Exchange with Aachen, Germany, to learn more about German culture as well as to improve my German. Since then I have also attended a German Language school for part of a summer, and backpacked around Europe with a friend from Aachen. Eventually my time in Arlington would come to and end and I moved back west, to Golden, Colorado. This is where I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematical Sciences at the Colorado Schoolf of Mines. I am currently a PhD student at the Colorado School of Mines, advised by Dr. Bo Wu and Dr. Mehmet Belviranli. My research is in Systems and Machine Learning, specifically Graph Neural Networks. I also currently split my time between my childhood home in Salida and Golden.