My name is Ivan Miloslavov. I am currently a second-year MSc student. My lab is the GRAM (Games Research at McGill), supervised by Clark Verbrugge. I am trying to find nice algorithms to solve complex stealth video games.
In less formal things, I'm just an average guy. I've lived in Montreal since 2005, but I was born in Russia. I like Beaver Tails, poutine and sometimes eating healthy.
I've done programming since a very young age - my very first experience having been with a custom programming language my parents wrote for me. It was able to do turtle graphics in Excel following my instructions, and that hooked me.
In fact, the appeal of Computer Science is very simple for me: I understand it well! From the very bases of how logic gates form complicated circuits to the advanced topics such as cryptography and networking, I am comfortable in most Computer Science topics.
I have worked with the GRAM lab since early 2018 thanks to the COMP 400 Research course. My original work was on generating enemies in stealth video games based on a developer-defined intended player path. You can read the paper here and view the presentation I did here (in PDF format).
I'm also a very avid but casual gamer. I've played games from most AAA titles to the entire Zachtronics game collection and Lord of the Rings Online. Some of my favorite games of all time are Kerbal Space Program, Minecraft, Factorio, Mirror's Edge and Dishonored. As I've played a wide array of genres and styles of games, I am able to bring that knowledge to the academic world.
I've worked as a Full-Stack Web Developer for 2 years at Dash Computer Solutions. I've done approximately everything there is to the Web at that job: UI design, backend, algorithm design, server maintenance, security, etc.
I have been a Teaching Assistant at McGill for the course COMP 302 - Programming Languages and Paradigms for 3 semesters. As such, I find myself proficient in OCaml and a fanatic of functional programming. I've also TA'd the course COMP 521 - Modern Computer Games in Fall 2019.
During Winter 2020, I got hired at my dream job - a teacher of Computer Science at CEGEP level, at John Abbott College. I have taught general topics in Computer Science to first-year students in the Information Technology course, a course I had to design myself. I've also taught the course Windows Networking to graduating students, a course that was pre-designed, but on a topic I did not have experience. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, I do not have official reviews done by the CEGEP - but overall, my students sounded happy with my courses!
You can see my full resume in the Contact page.