# Hello!

Profile picture of Talita James

I'm Talita,
I'm a game theory and computer science researcher, in my last year of my mechanical and mechatronic engineering degree at the University of Technology Sydney.

Some things I enjoy are:

  • Board Games
  • Puzzles, cryptic crosswords and writing trivia questions
  • Auslan (Australian Sign Language)

Talita James

## Research

I'm working on my first publication, here is the research i'm currently doing:

In Search of The Optimal Battleship Algorithm [Manuscript in progress]

Talita James, Luke Mathieson, Yuval Sanders

Battleship is a guessing game played by two players in which the goal is to be the first to sink all of the opponent's warships. Surprisingly, algorithms for playing the game battleship appear not to have been seriously studied in the scientific literature. We seek to rectify this gap by rigorously testing possible heuristics for playing the game battleship and drawing inferences about the optimal performance. We hope our study leads to more widespread attention to an interesting class of problems that we name "search and conquer" problems.
Fair Stable Matching for Tutors in Labs [Manuscript in progress]

Talita James, Luke Mathieson

Assigning tutors to labs is a time consuming task, that when done manually may lead to clashes or unfair assignments. We propose a metric of fairness, and develop a matching algorithm that is both fair and stable, for the many to many capacitated assignment of tutors to labs.

## Projects

Some of the fun things I've made:

Colour Contrast Checker: Tests colours against WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast Criterion to ensure colours provide adequate visual contrast

I made this project to improve the efficency when contrast checking multiple colours against each other. It taught me about the python image library (PIL) introduced me to the command line argument parser (argparse), which has been useful in many other projects.

Boardgame data visualiser: Using data from Board Game Stats, it generates a spotify wrapped style summary of a year of games

As a board game enthusiast, I record the results of each game i play. Since i can export the data in .json format, I used python to get a summary of my games, and present it in an interesting way, inspired by Spotify Wrapped. This project also interacts with the BGG api, to get extra information about each game.

Binary Clock: I made an LED grid run by an Arduino Uno, with a Real Time Clock module that displays the time as a 3x6 array of squares

I was disapointed with the lack of nerdy clocks, and made my own. This project was my first introduction to programing on PlatformIO, outside of the arduino framework. It helped develop my skills in understanding and producing circuit diagrams

## Skills

## Leadership

## Professional Experience

Research Assistant

I am currently working on my first publication, in the field of game theory and computer science. In this I've developed plans and algorithms to test theories. The research has used high performance computing (HPC), clusters and threading to run simulations for my research.

University Tutoring

I teach beginner programming to classes of 30 University students.
Crafted assignments, including clear scope documentation and unit testing with JUnit and PyUnit. Designed engaging learning materials, including coding exercises, and projects, to cater to diverse learning styles and skill levels. Demonstrated strong communication skills and a passion for teaching and mentoring students

Rapido Mechatronics Intern

Developed specialist 3D printing technology in a 6mo project. Created documentation including risk assignments, safe opperating procedures and handover information

Disability Support Worker

Supported children with disability to engage in the comunity.
I worked 1 on 1 with children to develop independent living skills. Being self employed, i managed my own invoices, insurance, and comunicated directly with clients and their caregivers.

## Find out more

Download my Resume
or send me an email, account@talitajames.com