Imaan Soltanalipour
AI Engineer · Founder, Elmdin
Los Angeles, CA
I'm an AI engineer in Los Angeles and a UCLA Computer Science graduate. I build software for government agencies and nonprofits: a multi-tenant queue and scheduling system for agency waiting rooms, a multilingual intake agent that works over web, SMS and voice, and a grounded help-desk assistant over federal benefits regulations with a citation-scored evaluation harness.
I also run Elmdin, an independent research and engineering organization that works across every field. Before this, I built part of the software behind STIMscope at UCLA's Aharoni Lab, worked on humanoid robot learning, modernized a 1M+ document portal for Amgen's manufacturing sites, led software and systems for a NASA Langley NCAS capstone, and evaluated large language models at Outlier AI and Data Annotation.
I'm interested in AI, software, neurotech, robotics and startups, in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. I'm looking for software/ML engineering roles at startups and more established companies, and I'm open to research collaborations.
GitHub
Numbers include my private work — private repositories and private contributions.
Private work
Most of my contributions are in private repositories. The code stays private; this is what it is.
- STIMscope platformAharoni LabClosed-loop real-time imaging and patterned optogenetic stimulation on NVIDIA Jetson.
- Queue management platformGovernment & nonprofitMulti-tenant queue and scheduling system for agency waiting rooms.
- AI intake agentGovernment & nonprofitMultilingual intake over web, SMS and voice, with cited eligibility pre-screening.
- Help-desk agentGovernment & nonprofitGrounded Q&A over federal benefits regulations, with a citation-scored eval harness.
- NaturefindElmdinTurns an observation into testable hypotheses, formalizations and a research document.
- HandbookElmdinA research operating system that orchestrates and verifies a project end to end.
- NeuralForgeElmdinAgentic research platform for optogenetics and neuroscience.
- RoboticsElmdin
- IslandElmdin
- PlazzafyElmdin
- EvalueElmdin
- OSINTElmdin
Skills & technologies
Languages
- Python
- C/C++
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- SQL
- Bash
- Verilog
- RISC-V Assembly
- HTML/CSS
ML / AI
- PyTorch
- PyTorch Lightning
- NumPy
- SciPy
- CuPy
- scikit-learn
- OpenCV
- Cellpose
- CUDA
- Diffusion models
- Flow matching
- Transformers
- Deep RL
- Compressive sensing
- Bayesian/variational inference
Agentic AI
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- LangGraph
- Multi-agent orchestration
- Adversarial eval design
- Ollama
Web & Full-Stack
- React
- Next.js
- Node.js
- FastAPI
- Flask
- Firebase (Firestore, Auth)
- TailwindCSS
- REST / WebSockets
Systems & Tools
- NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin
- Docker
- ZeroMQ
- GitHub Actions CI/CD
- PyQt
- napari
- IDS Peak
- Linux
- Git
- pytest
- Playwright
- MuJoCo
- FPGA
- Raspberry Pi
- Arduino
- Unity ML-Agents
Coursework
- Algorithms & Complexity
- Operating Systems
- Computer Architecture
- Computer Networks
- Machine Learning
- Deep Learning
- Robot Learning
- Probability & Statistics
- Linear Algebra
- Signals & Systems
- Electromagnetics
Experience
Industry Experience
- Aug 2026 — Present
Government & Nonprofit Software
AI Engineer · Los Angeles, CA
- Queue management platform: designed and built a multi-tenant queue and scheduling system for agency waiting rooms.
- AI intake agent: building a multilingual intake agent for Community Action Programs over web, SMS and voice, covering eligibility pre-screening with rule citations, document collection, escalation to a human, and draft case records.
- Help-desk agent: built a grounded Q&A assistant over federal benefits regulations for an agency support desk, with a citation-scored evaluation harness; used to distill existing workflows, internal documents, guides and videos into skills and knowledge bases.
- Jul 2026 — Present
Elmdin
Founder (Independent research and engineering organization) · Los Angeles, CA
- Run an independent research and engineering organization that works across every field; open-source work is published at github.com/Elmdin.
- Jun 2026 — Aug 2026
Data Annotation
AI Evaluation Contractor · Remote
- Authored adversarial SWE-bench-style evaluation tasks for AI coding models.
- Built a containerized Docker-in-Docker grading harness with network isolation for reproducible task evals.
- Jun 2025 — Sep 2025
Amgen
Software Engineer Intern · Thousand Oaks, CA
- Modernized a legacy Internet Information Services (IIS) architecture providing access to 1M+ documents for manufacturing facilities across countries during server shutdowns, using JavaScript and Python.
- Implemented search, filtering, caching, and an informative user interface so users could quickly find critical documents.
- Participated in Amgen’s Intern Bootcamp — engaged with peers, supervisors, and company leaders in weekly Q&A meetings and toured research and manufacturing facilities.
- Jun 2025 — Jul 2025
NASA Langley Research Center — NCAS Mission 3 Capstone
Lead Software & Systems Engineer · Hampton, VA
- Co-authored a proposal addressing a gap in NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility mission — on-ground infrastructure for eVTOL aircraft emergency response in rural areas; presented to a panel of engineers, scientists, and supervisors and fielded technical questions.
- Designed a mobile vehicle fleet (landing pads, generators, weather sensors, and multi-channel radio/cellular/satellite communications) enabling coordination between aircraft, first responders, and victims.
- Conducted on-site research at NASA Langley: toured facilities, met with employees, and applied subject-matter-expert insights to refine the proposal.
- Jan 2024 — Jun 2024
Outlier
Software Developer / AI Trainer (Contract) · Remote
- Trained AI language models by analyzing deviations in model responses and rewriting outputs for clarity and accuracy.
- Wrote Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, SQL, and HTML/CSS for model refactoring, debugging, and documentation.
- Identified and corrected inaccuracies and hallucinations in AI model outputs.
Research Experience
- Jan 2025 — Aug 2026
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine — Aharoni Lab
Undergraduate Researcher (Optical Neuroscience / Neural-Connectivity Inference) · Los Angeles, CA
- Publication: H. Chorsi, S. Soldado-Magraner, Y. Jin, I. Soltanalipouryekesammak, et al. “STIMscope: centimeter-scale all-optical imaging and patterned optogenetic manipulation at single-cell resolution.” bioRxiv (2026). PMID: 42244717.
- Conference: Society for Neuroscience, Neuroscience 2025 (co-author).
- Built Python/C++ GUI features for STIMscope, an open-source all-optical platform for single-cell-resolution imaging and DMD-patterned optogenetic stimulation — patterned projection, a multi-method calibration suite, real-time per-ROI trace extraction, Otsu/Cellpose segmentation, and I2C hardware control across live and simulation modes.
- Built the containerized compressive-sensing connectivity-inference pipeline: CAVIaR variational inference on simulated calcium-imaging data, deployed on an embedded GPU platform.
- Packaged the platform as a reproducible ARM64 Docker distribution for NVIDIA Jetson.
- Jun 2026 — Aug 2026
Humanoid Robot Learning — UCLA (4-person team)
Researcher (Robot Learning / Humanoid Locomotion) · Los Angeles, CA
- Co-authored a controlled study of whether action-free human video improves humanoid bipedal locomotion (Unitree G1, simulation) beyond size-matched retargeted motion capture.
- Designed the grounding method: extended video-action learning from tabletop manipulation to whole-body locomotion, generating paired human and robot training data in simulation.
Education
- Sep 2024 — Jun 2026
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
B.S. in Computer Science
Technical Breadth in Electrical Engineering & Economics
Los Angeles, CA
- Aug 2022 — May 2024
Moorpark College
A.S. in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Natural Sciences, & Liberal Studies
Moorpark, CA
Certifications
Anthropic Academy — 16 courses completed · 2026
- Claude API
- Model Context Protocol
- Subagents
- Agent Skills
- Claude Code
- Claude Platform
- AI Capabilities and Limitations
- AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations
- AI Fluency for Builders
- AI Fluency for Students
- AI Fluency for Nonprofits
- Teaching AI Fluency
Hugging Face — Agents Course — Certificate of Excellence · 2026
Leadership & activities
Creator, Community College Research Organization · 2023
Built a platform connecting students and professors to propose research projects and recruit collaborators.
NASA NCAS Missions 1 & 2 · 2024
Completed NASA STEM research programs; designed mission-control software for a simulated lunar rover and presented to NASA engineers.
Full-Stack Volunteer, Dev Launchers (Nonprofit) · 2023
80+ commits (JavaScript/Strapi); built the first backend profile-picture upload and led the profile-page team.
President, Persian Club — Moorpark College
Founded and led the cultural club; ran weekly meetings and a campus-wide Persian New Year event.
Newton's cradle
Pull an end ball and let go. How many clacks can one swing make? (Sound on for the clack.)