They reached out to me for an interview and, of course, I agreed! This article has a lot of my viewpoints on why I decided to leave my Google APM offer behind to found a startup instead. Don't get me wrong, it may sound like I'm bashing Google in this article (which maybe was the BG's angle?) but I am definitely not. I totally loved my time at Google, in fact I think I would have been extremely happy if I worked there and I'd recommend it as a job to anybody. It's just that I prefered what I'm doing now, ever so slightly more.

This is the culmination of my delve into academia. I worked two years with the Quantum Nanostructures and Nanofabrication group at MIT in order to be a lead co-author on this paper, titled "A superconducting nanowire-based architecture for neuromorphic computing". I know, that's a mouthful, but physicists are usually not good at naming things. I enjoyed my time at the lab quite a bit but I found research to be a little stressful. I have enormous respect for those who push the boundaries of human knowledge forward.

I was invited to give a keynote speech for Tsinghua University in a metaverse space they created. I was there representing MIT as a metaverse expert. The title of my speech was 'Is the metaverse the future of the internet?'. This was a fun speech to give for two reasons: (1) I was in avatar form (2) it was at 3am my time.

The MIT center for entrepreneurship started a podcast last year, which they still continue to this day, and invited me to be the first ever guest! Episode description:

In this episode, we feature an interview with Jesus Lares, an alumni of the Trust Center's delta v and MIT Fuse programs. Lares is a recent MIT undergrad who passed on a job at Google to found Eraverse, a company designing custom locations in the metaverse where far-flung participants can collaborate on projects. He says he never imagined he would work in the entrepreneurship space when he entered MIT as an aerospace engineering major. But, his intensive engagement with the Trust Center's delta v and Fuse programs helped him decide to pursue building a company full-time after graduating.Conducting the interview is Paul Cheek, the executive director of the Trust Center and one of Lares's advisors during undergrad.

It was a 7 mile hike there in the freezing cold rain - my girlfriend (Marisa Hart) and I were exploring Iceland. There was so much fog that we probably couldn't see 15 feet in front of us. We just followed our best guess of what the path was and followed where the crowd was going. At some point we heard what sounded like rushing water and figured we were near a waterfall. Then we come across this basin and see one of the most amazing sights of our lives. Lava exploding from the ground into a giant lake of molten rock. The basin was probably 120F, in stark contrast to the freezing hike.

In my senior year physics class (IB higher level physics) we had this massive project for IB called the internal assessment (I think). Anyways, it was due on a Monday. The Friday before it was due, I was stressed in class because I hadn't started it yet. I told my physics teacher I wanted to build a cannon and create a model which fully predicts its behavior. My teacher told me there was no chance I could do this over the weekend, and he was angry I waited until the last minute. Anyways, I made it my life mission at that moment to build a cannon that weekend. And so I did! It took the whole weekend but my friend and I did it. We also ended up getting an A on the assignment. My physics teacher and I had a complicated relationship in high school but I think he liked me.

The year is 2020, the month is August. Everything is horrible, COVID has cancelled an entire semester of my college experience (well, it's not cancelled but it's online). What do I do?! Luckily fate, in part, answered this question for me when an acquaintance of mine, Arina Khotimsky (we are very good friends now but at the time we barely knew each other), asked me if I was interested in spending the entire remote semester in Hawaii! I jumped on this opportunity and lived in a house of 4 strangers, and many many more people who came and went. This was such an insane adventure, it's impossible to describe in a single paragraph. We were isolated from the world, exploring nature, exploring our inner selves, surfing, hiking, climbing waterfalls, cliff diving, snorkeling, making friends, and working. We had to wake up everyday at 4am for classes because 4am in Hawaii is 10am at MIT :)

My girlfriend and I did over 200 miles on the John Muir Trail over 15 days of backpacking, about 40k feet of elevation gain total. We started from King's Canyon road's end, skipping Glen and Forester pass, and added on about 16 miles to resupply at Vermillion Valley resort (VVR).

Longest day: 18 miles, starting at Salley Keys, doing Selden pass in the morning, then finishing in VVR. We were delirious but kept pushing on for the borgers and place to shower and sleep.

Shortest day: 8.5 miles the day after VVR. Bc we got lazy after the borgers.

Hardest day: 16 mile day doing Muir pass in the morning. The pass was covered in 2 miles of snow on the way up and 2 miles on the way down. The last night hadn't reached freezing so it was postholing all the way down (took like 5 hours). Luckily we found some amazing PCT hikers (our trail parents) who helped us navigate the snow on the way down.

We had 1 shower total on the trip, 1 resupply, and did 1 load of laundry, all at VVR. God bless that place.

I spent a week in Lima, a week in Arequipa, and two weeks in Cusco. This was an interesting sort of work-exploration-vacation: every day we would wake up at 5am and either work all day or hike all day. This is also when we decided to start hacking together some ideas for the original iteration of Eraverse (none of which we use today - but hey that's the startup life)!

Over the month of January 2020, I had the opportunity to teach Python, relativity, waves, and optics to high schoolers and students in préparatoire (post-secondary but pre-university) around Grenoble, France. Yes, I had to teach these classes in French! The students were ruthless because I was essentially their age and I probably spoke like a middle school child. It was nontheless a meaningful experience to me. By teaching here, talking to the kids about life in America, my educational background, and college admissions, I hope that I inspired at least a few of my students to go outside their comfort zone and consider studying abroad one day.

On Valentine's Day, 2018 there was a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, leaving 17 dead and 17 injured. Parkland is 45 minutes away from my high school, Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach. Needless to say, after that shooting the students at Suncoast were terrified, angry, and shocked. We felt voiceless. At that time I was the student body president and I felt that I had a responsibility to do whatever I could to make the students feel heard, so I rallied the student government and the school administration to initiate a school-wide walkout in protest of loose gun laws. Over 2000 students participated in it, and it was organized as a grass-roots movement.

Vrse enables the 3D web by creating a foundational builder and ecosystem. Our builder targets creatives so they can create stunning personal websites and portfolios in 15 mins with no code. Ever seen anything like this before?

If you want a job reach out to me via email: jesus@aura.space

Was one of two lead authors on a paper published in the Institute of Physics' Neuromorphic Computing Journal. The title is "A Superconducting Nanowire-based Architecture for Neuromorphic Computing."

Researched neuromorphic computing with superconducting nanowire hardware. I helped build a software platform which turns arbitrary spiking neural networks (written in Python, the most common language used by neuromorphic algorithm specialists) into a hardware representation for the network in LTSpice (a common framework used by electrical engineers) based off a superconducting nanowire hardware framework created by my lab.

Navigated the complex structures of a company as huge as Google to make my little piece of the world function :)

This was honestly an amazing program. We had to design our own project, create PRDs, design documents, and build it ourselves. Honestly.. it was teaching us how to found a startup. It had a huge impact on me because, before STEP, I wanted to be a SWE. After STEP, I wanted to be a PM. After my APM internship, I wanted to be a founder.

Consulting for a technology company in the software and IT sector, creating a market analysis and designing a go-to-market strategy. Created a decision model, as well as instigated a market study, on open and closed source business models. Quantified and ranked four key productivity modifiers for an open source business.

Designed and implemented key ML algorithms to intercept and analyze signals intelligence. Developed a streaming and scaling framework for algorithm training and model deployment in a Linux cluster. Ran a trade study for ML implementation. Attended two week-long codeathons in Colorado and Maryland, where the entire team worked together to rapidly prototype and implement new algorithms in response to the customers' direct feedback. Each day would conclude with a team-customer meeting to discuss the day's work, and plan the next day's direction. I was in charge of presenting the ML-AI work to the customers.

Class Treasurer for the MIT Class of 2022.

I am in charge of drafting and maintaining a budget of $20k - including the financing for all class events. I also coordinate the acquisition and distribution of funds, as well as compensations. I have organized various events, including a movie theater outing for the class of 2022 and a class get-together (study break). I also took part in organizing and running various other class events, including the class formal, class carnival, and miscellaneous events.

I have attended every event hosted by the class council.