About
Brett Daley says artificial intelligence will be the defining technology of the 21st century. Throughout his Northeastern experience, he conducted advanced machine learning research on campus and completed four transformative co-ops—including at Tesla and SpaceX—toward expanding his knowledge of and skills in this field, with aspirations of one day launching a company that leverages AI to promote global prosperity.
Daley is now moving closer to the goal as a recipient of the Schwarzman Scholarship, a prestigious honor enabling him to enroll in a yearlong, fully funded master’s program at Schwarzman College on the Tsinghua University campus in Beijing.
Daley, who plans to focus his master’s program on business and economics, describes China as “the Silicon Valley of the world” and says the country is poised to dominate in this field in the years ahead.
Brett's Timeline
Year 1
Coding for Professor Kaeli's lab
As an Undergraduate GPU Researcher, he wrote code for image segmentation—that is, separating out specific elements within digital images.
Year 2
Microprocessor Design Co-op at AMD
He designed computer microprocessor components, wrote firmware, and even crafted tutorials for other engineers on how to use company-specific design tools.
Year 3
Electrical Design Engineering Co-op at Flextronics
As an intern at FLEX, he focused on circuit design, and in one project created a computer circuit board from scratch.
Year 4
Energy Products Firmware Internship at Tesla
He was dispatched to Tesla’s battery storage facility at the Southern California Edison substation to perform an important and timely firmware update that took four days to complete.
Year 4
Researching in the Robotics Lab
Working with assistant professor Chris Amato’s robotics and AI lab, Daley focused on deep reinforcement learning, which essentially means training artificial neural networks to perform tasks through trial-and-error.
Year 5
Winner of the Schwarzman Scholarship
The prestigious honor enabled him to enroll in August in a yearlong, fully funded master’s program at Schwarzman College on the Tsinghua University campus in Beijing.