Manu Nicholas Jacob

Summary

Hardware engineer working on enterprise AI server platforms: validation, system-level debugging, and root-cause engineering. Independently runs a measurement-driven research program on edge machine-learning systems, with 13 papers across memory bandwidth, energy, thermal behaviour and quantization, 11 of them currently under review, and 15 public DOI-archived artifacts released alongside them. Named inventor on an invention disclosure authorized for filing.

Experience

Education

Papers · 13

Invention & artifacts

Capstone

Competition awards

• Best Embedded System · WorldWide Rover HackUMass XII
• Best Hardware Hack + Best Circuit Hack · 4Sight HackUMass X

Peer review and artifact evaluation

• Artifact Evaluation Committee, reviews delivered · ATC '26 (ACM SIGOPS) 2026

  Invited by the committee chair, serving as an independent researcher, on the annual technical conference now run by ACM SIGOPS as the continuation of USENIX ATC, which CORE rates A under that name. The work is assessing submitted research artifacts for availability, functionality and reproducibility. Both assigned artifact reviews were delivered inside the window, on 27 September and 2 October 2026; the committee's badge decisions are the committee's, and are not claimed here.

• Reviewer, review delivered · JOSS: Optiland 2026

  An open-source optical design package. All 31 checklist items worked and the recommendation sent to the editor on 19 August 2026. Three issues went to the authors and all three were resolved: a benchmark script behind a published table that was not in the repository, a paper example that could not run as a script, and a throughput collapse on a 4 GB card that shows up well before the memory actually runs out. The last of those came from building the package and running its own GPU benchmark rather than reading the number in the paper, and the maintainer reproduced it on a different card. The recommendation is not the decision; the paper sits with its editor.

• Reviewer, paper published · JOSS: nsEVDx 2026

  A Python library for non-stationary extreme value distributions, assigned 20 August 2026. The review filed three substantive issues against the samplers, verified the fixes against a fresh install from PyPI, and completed on 2 September; the paper was published on 6 September 2026 as doi:10.21105/joss.11187, with the review public under the published paper.

• Reviewer, in progress · JOSS: PySlyde 2026

  A toolkit for preprocessing digital pathology whole-slide images, review opened 24 August 2026. One of three reviewers on it. The interesting part of this one is that the claims are about throughput and memory on slides too large to hold at once, which is the same question as everything else here in a different domain.

• Reviewer, in progress · JOSS: Battflow 2026

  An automated workflow for predicting battery electrolyte properties. Assigned at pre-review in August; the review itself opened 1 October 2026, one of two reviewers on it.

• Reviewer, checklist complete · JOSS: spherical 2026

  A database and automated pipeline for VLT/SPHERE high-contrast imaging, review opened 3 September 2026. One of two reviewers. This one started as a volunteer note to the editor rather than an inbound assignment.

• Reviewer, checklist complete · JOSS: graph-pes 2026

  Graph-based machine-learning models for potential-energy surfaces, assigned 5 September 2026. One of three reviewers on it. The performance claims are the familiar question again: what governs throughput, and was it measured or assumed.

• Listed reviewer · JOSS reviewer database 2026

  In the database since 17 August 2026, listed under performance engineering, benchmarking and embedded systems. Six assignments from six different editors have followed, and the six entries above are all of them.

Service

• Judge · HackTX, UT Austin 2025
• Judge and Judge Advisor · VEX Robotics Ongoing
• Mentor and judge · University hackathons Ongoing
• Talk, accepted · Embedded Vision Summit 2027 Feb 2027
• Talk, booked · Austin Python Meetup Dec 2026
• Teaching maths and science · Lovedale Foundation
• Training adults with learning disabilities · Diya Foundation
• Video production · Yuvalok Foundation

Campus leadership

• Resident Assistant · UMass Amherst, community of 450 residents Jan 2023 to May 2025
• Campus Ambassador · Dell Technologies at UMass Amherst Fall 2024
• Membership Coordinator · IEEE, UMass Amherst Fall 2023

Certifications

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 Certified Generative AI Professional Oracle · 2025
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 Certified AI Foundations Associate Oracle · Oct 2025
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2025 Certified Foundations Associate Oracle · Oct 2025

Coursework

• AI Infrastructure and Operations Fundamentals NVIDIA · Aug 2026
• Data Science: Probability (PH125.3x) HarvardX · Jun 2020
• AI for Everyone: Master the Basics IBM · May 2020

Skills