Cale Smith

I'm currently looking for a job in software engineering and/or ML. I'm entry level but I consume textbooks. I care deeply about building impactful things well and I want to work with folks who feel the same. If you know of any opportunites shoot me an email: calepayson(at)mac.com

Some things I'm proud of:

• Marko Polo, a markov chain based quote generator written in C.
• This website.
• My home-lab.
• The biotracking database at InnerPlant.
• Plants that can communicate with satellites while at InnerPlant.
• I independently discovered the first major functional mutation to SARS-CoV-2, D614G.
• Two thirds of the OCR.
• An Ironman 70.3.
• My work in rescue.

What I've done for work

2020-2023 - InnerPlant

I joined InnerPlant as the tenth hire a little over a year after it was founded. I started as a molecular biologist but, for the simple fact there was a ton to do and not enough people, I got to touch every aspect of the bio-development pipeline and nearly every aspect of research, from ideation to testing.

After a while I joined the business team. Again, I got to dive into every aspect. I helped with business development, strategy, and marketing and lead field trials and our social strategy.

Through both these roles I spent a ton of time learning about and building our biotracking database (with a wonderful colleague). When I started, everything was tracked in independent spreadsheets. Over time we built a custom PostreSQL database hosted on google cloud with a frontend for usability. (There was lots of iteration along the way).

2020 - Coronavirus Bioinformatics Lab (student)

Covid hit during my Senior year of college and UCSC had to scramble to provide labs that could be done remote. One of these was a bioinformatics lab focused around Covid. It was, hands down, the coolest class I ever took. Some classes are decades behind the industry, this one was days behind.

We tracked the evolution of the virus through near-realtime genotyping data, studied its structure, and built possible heritage trees to guess where it came from (spoiler: it's totally possible it came from the lab). I got so obsessed with tracking it I independently discovered the mutation that was causing Europe and the East Coast to get walloped early in the pandemic.

2019-2020 - Toxic RNA Lab (student)

The Toxic RNA Lab is an awesome hybrid lab/research opportunity that UCSC offers. It's run by Dr. Jeremy Sanford who researches mis-splicing events (the biological equivelent of a compiler failing to remove some fragments of certain comments). Genetic diseases caused by these events can be treated fairly cheaply so Dr. Sanford is building a library of orphan diseases (diseases considered too rare to be worth curing) in order to treat them.

Basically, Dr. Sanford has a list of mutations and needs to check if each one is caused by a mis-splicing event. He started the Toxic RNA Lab to get more manpower working on his list.

I worked on a few BRCA2 mutations. I loved it.

2016-2020 - National Park Service

I worked Ocean Resuce in the Bay Area. Mostly Stinson Beach but occasionaly Ocean Beach. Best job I ever had. If you're in your early 20's it's worth checking out.

2012-2016 - Marin Search and Rescue (volunteer)

I joined SAR when I was 14 and was (briefly) the youngest full member of a SAR team in the US. It was an incredible opportunity to do meaningful things in beautiful places throughout California. I'd recommend it to anyone with (lots of) free time.