About

I am Jake Bauer, a computational astrophysicist, applied AI practitioner, technical leader, and founder of Nazo Analytics.

From astrophysics to applied AI

I began my career in computational astrophysics, where the work required moving constantly between mathematics, simulation, software, and physical interpretation. After completing my PhD, I spent seven years at Striveworks, an early-stage MLOps company serving defense and national-security customers. My work ranged across computer vision, natural language processing, geospatial and graph problems, field-deployed machine learning, customer-facing technical strategy, and the practical constraints of putting AI into consequential environments.

I now serve as CTO of a startup applying AI and scientific computing to complex physical phenomena measured by bespoke sensor networks. Nazo is my independent practice for technical advisory, research, architecture, and carefully scoped prototype work.

Why Nazo

Nazo comes from the Japanese word 謎: a mystery, puzzle, or difficult question. The name reflects the work I enjoy most. The problem is usually not “which model should we use?” It is understanding what is actually true, what evidence would resolve the uncertainty, and how mathematics, software, data, and organizational judgment fit together.

Nazo exists for problems where generic AI advice is not enough: a model claim must be tested, a scientific baseline must be rebuilt, a prototype must survive contact with real data, or leadership needs an independent answer before committing substantial capital and engineering effort.

Writing as evidence

The writing on this site is a public record of how I approach technical problems. Some articles are tutorials, some are research notes, and some reconstruct older work with modern tools. Collectively, they show the part of consulting that a services page cannot: how I define a problem, inspect assumptions, build a baseline, measure failure, and decide whether a result deserves to be trusted.

Explore the writing and research →

Outside the work

Outside of work, I study Japanese, cook, play guitar, take photographs, and travel. Those interests occasionally appear here because technical work is still personal work: the questions we choose and the standards we apply to them come from a larger life.