Rae Chipera

Doctoral candidate · AI researcher · founder of Jaxorik AI Research Group · former Marine · still deciding if NumPy rhymes with lumpy.

raechipera LinkedIn ORCID arXiv preprint contact CV

About

Hi. I'm a doctoral candidate at National University. I work on reservoir computing and nonlinear dynamics. My dissertation investigates fractal activation functions — Cantor, Weierstrass, Mandelbrot — in Echo State Networks, and what happens when you replace the usual smooth nonlinearities with something mathematically wilder.

In other words, I build machine learning models that don't break when the data is chaotic or messy.

Before this, I worked in Marine Corps Intelligence, deployed to Iraq, trained in Arabic at DLI, and spent a while in quantitative finance. I also taught myself calculus partly while deployed and partly in a national lab library.

I also run Jaxorik AI Research Group, a New Mexico firm focused on explainable AI for disaster response and critical infrastructure.

Reservoir computing Fractal geometry Echo State Networks Explainable AI Critical infrastructure Nonlinear dynamics

Research

Beyond Lipschitz Continuity and Monotonicity: Fractal and Chaotic Activation Functions in Echo State Networks preprint

with J. Du & I. Tsapara · arXiv:2512.14675

Theoretical analysis of fractal activation functions in Echo State Networks, introducing the Degenerate Echo State Property (d-ESP) as a formal framework for characterizing reservoir dynamics under non-smooth, self-similar activations. Analytical work; empirical validation is the dissertation.

Dissertation: Beyond Smooth Activations: Irregular Functions for Modeling Chaotic Data Patterns in Neural Networks in progress

National University · Committee: Du, Tsapara, Dhou

Proposal defended April 2026. Full study examines Cantor, Weierstrass, Logistic Map, Mandelbrot activations across multiple benchmark datasets using MANOVA-based statistical design. The goal is a principled theoretical account of when and why fractals work in recurrent architectures.

Teaching

Private Mathematics Instruction ongoing

Rio Rancho, NM

One-on-one instruction in Geometry, Algebra II, AP Calculus, AP Statistics, and college-level Statistics.

Code

fractal_reservoir

Python · dissertation codebase · public release with journal submission

ESN implementation with fractal activation functions. Includes Cantor, Weierstrass, and Mandelbrot variants, memory capacity benchmarks (following Jaeger 2001), and experiment pipelines for CIFAR-10, GZ2, and Gravity Spy.

PyRae

Python · from-scratch deep learning

NumPy-based PyTorch re-implementation. Good for understanding what's actually happening under the black box.

satellite-anomaly-detection-demo

Python · Jaxorik demo

Anomaly detection pipeline for satellite data, built as a technical demonstration for Jaxorik's explainable AI work in disaster response and critical infrastructure.

Contact

Best reached by email at rachipe@jaxorik.com. I'm interested in collaborations on reservoir computing, explainable AI, and high-stakes decision-making applications. Government contracting inquiries welcome — Jaxorik is registered on SAM.gov (UEI K8ENCCGZ2M13) as WOSB/SDVOSB.