Eric Heiden
Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA
Mountain View, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolEric Heiden is a Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA with a decade of experience building high-performance simulation and robotics systems. Based in Mountain View, he develops GPU-accelerated simulation technology such as Newton and contributes to the widely used nvidia/warp framework, focusing on performance profiling, numerical robustness, and cross-platform reliability. His background spans deep learning and robotics research roles at NVIDIA and Google, plus hands-on autonomy work at JPL and systems work at ISI and Two Sigma. He holds an MS and is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science from USC, blending rigorous academic training with production-grade engineering. Notably, he has implemented Ceres-based system identification for real double-pendulum data and experimented with neural control and friction models, reflecting a rare mix of physics-based modeling and ML-driven control. He combines low-level CUDA/C++ expertise with practical profiling and tooling to deliver faster, more accurate simulation stacks for robotics research and applications.
10 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science at University of Southern CaliforniaBachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science at University of RostockAbitur (secondary-school diploma), 1.1 (Valedictorian), Abitur (secondary-school diploma), 1.1 (Valedictorian) at Alexander-von-Humboldt-Gymnasium Greifswald
German, English, French
Github Skills (18)
simulation10
c-language10
python10
simulator10
simulations10
gpu-programming10
ceres-solver10
git-repository10
physics10
cuda10
cprogramming-language10
github-repos10
trainings9
performance-optimization9
numerical-methods9
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
NVIDIA/warp
Apr 2022 - Dec 2022
A Python framework for GPU-accelerated simulation, robotics, and machine learning.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:6 reviews, 50 commits, 69 comments in 7 months
Contributions summary:Eric contributed to the `nvidia/warp` repository, a framework for GPU simulation and graphics, by implementing features related to performance and functionality. They added support for NVTX profiling in the `ScopedTimer` utility, enhancing the framework's ability to track and analyze performance bottlenecks. Code changes include modifications to articulation and build scripts, and the integration of finite number checks, indicating a focus on numerical accuracy and optimization. The user also addressed specific issues, such as correcting the loading of dynamic link libraries on Windows.
gpumachine-learningpythonroboticssimulation
eric-heiden/deep-rl-docker
Sep 2017 - May 2019
Docker image with OpenAI Gym, Baselines, MuJoCo and Roboschool, utilizing TensorFlow and JupyterLab.
Contributions:16 commits, 4 PRs, 31 pushes in 1 year 7 months
docker-imagejupyterlabmujocoopenai-gymtensorflow
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