Armin Samii
Just a guy on a bicycle, yelling about ranked-choice voting.
About
I am the Founder of dashcam.bike, a small business building tools to make streets safer for city cyclists.
I founded and continue to lead RCVis, which has been used by millions of voters worldwide to better understand the results of Ranked Choice Voting elections.
Previously, I helped humans and self-driving cars communicate with graphics & visualizations at Argo AI, leading the Visualization, Remote Guidance, and User Experience teams.
Prior to 2019, I worked on fashion-technology at Avametric, a virtual fitting room startup that helps you choose the best size for your body. Prior to 2015, I worked on Photoshop Fix and Mix at Adobe, shipping some of the first mobile Photoshop apps to millions of users.
I received my Master's from the Visual Computing Lab at U.C. Berkeley, advised by James O'Brien and funded by the NSF GRFP. I received my Bachelor's from U.C. Santa Cruz, advised by James Davis.
I live in the bridgiest city in the world: Pittsburgh, PA. I volunteer with March on Harrisburg and Better Streets Lawrenceville.
Email me at hello@arminsamii.com.
Last updated: Sep 2023
Projects
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dashcam.bike
Bike Safety Company, 2022-present
Tool for advocates to fight for safer streets by recording bike rides and reporting hazards before they get worse. Our stabilizing phone mount and app work together to create high-quality footage with just a phone camera.
Hazard Reporting
Live 311 Reporting Map, 2022
Aggregating the 311 reports from the Dashcam app to Pittsburgh and DC city governments, and putting them in an interactive, filterable map
UberCheats
Chrome Extension, 2020
UberEATS has a bug that led to underpayments for gig workers. UberCheats allows couriers to detect when they have been underpaid.
Argo AI Visualizations
Video, 2020-10-30
An example of the visualizations we built at Argo. In my opinion, Argo has the best dataviz of any autonomous vehicle company. I'm biased, but you can check it and decide for yourself.
Transcroobie
Website, 2016
Human-corrected speech-to-text, combining Amazon Mechanical Turk with Google Speech API. Deprecated.
Vocabulary Quizzer
Flash Application (long live ActionScript), 2010
Created to help me study for the GRE Verbal Exam. Has gone wherever old Flash apps go to rest.
Press
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The delivery rider who took on his faceless boss
Article, 2024-03-15
A chapter from the book "Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI"
2024 'State of our Streets' released in Lawrenceville
Article, 2024-02-09
On Better Streets Lawrenceville's State of our Streets 2024 Report.
Our Train-Themed Wedding!
Article, 2023-03-13
I met my partner on BART, and seven years and one day later, we celebrated BART and public transit at our wedding.
technical.ly
Article, 2023-03-13
Lessons from a solopreneur: 10 questions with Dashcam for Your Bike founder Armin Samii.
technical.ly
Article, 2023-02-16
Investment in infrastructure and racial equity.
technical.ly
Article, 2023-01-26
Listed as one of Pittsburgh's top tech companies of 2023
WBUR
Article, 2023-01-10
Speaking with Here & Now about why bicyclists are given a false choice between two bad options, and should instead advocate for better infrastructure.
Pittsburgh City Paper
Article, 2022-12-22
On how dashcam.bike helped BikePGH win funding to protect one of Pittsburgh's flagship bike lanes.
CityCast Pittsburgh
Podcast, 2022-10-12
Podcast episode about the importance of better bike infrastructure, based on an incident captured with dashcam.bike.
City Paper PGH
Article, 2022-10-07
I captured this interaction with the dashcam.bike app, though this article shares my personal story.
technical.ly
Article, 2022-10-19
It is claimed that I am an influencer of code. Who am I to deny it? #influencer.
WPXI
Video, 2022-09-16
We organized Park(ing) Day 2022 in Lawrenceville, and WPXI spoke to Better Streets Lawrenceville about improving street safety. I appear around 1:45 to talk about improvements to Main & Butler.
technical.ly
Article, 2022-09-22
The Business Journals
Video, 2022-09-23
Article from The Business Journals about dashcam.bike's Hazard Map.
WPXI
Video, 2022-10-12
TV Interview with WPXI Pittsburgh discussing how dashcam.bike makes streets safer.
PittsburghInno
Article, 2021-12-28
An early announcement of PGH Lab Cohort 7.0
Fox 5 New York
Ranked Choice Voting, 2021-06-03
TV Interview with Fox 5 New York. Soundbite at 2:45 into the video, explaining the benefits of Ranked Choice Voting.
RCV Tabulator Release
Ranked Choice Voting, 2021-03-12
Interview for the release of the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center Universal Tabulator.
Gothamist
Ranked Choice Voting, 2021-06-30
Gothamist used RCVis for their official 2021 NYC primary reporting. I worked with Gothamist to create the visualizations in this article.
Ballotpedia
Ranked Choice Voting, 2021-06-30
RCVis was used on Ballotpedia to visualize the results of the New York City Mayoral Primary.
City & State PA
Ranked Choice Voting, 2022-07-05
In which I'm quoted discussing how RCV could have helped in the 2022 PA Primaries.
Bucks County Herald
Ranked Choice Voting, 2022-05-19
Press Release on the 2022 Primaries, and how RCV can help.
CNET Roadshow
UberCheats, 2021-02-18
Wired
UberCheats, 2021-02-24
Wired article featuring UberCheats and other software used to make gig work more fair.
Wall Street Journal
UberCheats, 2021-06-23
Research & Patents
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Clothing Model Generation and Display System
Patent, 2019
US Patent 20190130649 A1 (pending)
Using adaptive meshes in fixed-mesh pipelines
Poster, 2015
"Resampling Adaptive Cloth Simulations onto Fixed-Topology Meshes"
George Brown, Armin Samii, James F. O'Brien, and Rahul Narain
ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2015
George Brown, Armin Samii, James F. O'Brien, and Rahul Narain
ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation 2015
A Perceptually Based Model of Visual Adaptation
Thesis, 2014
A perceptual model that accounts for the time-varying changes to perceived color and brightness that occur due to time-varying adaptation and the transition between cone- and rod-mediated vision.
Aesthetics-driven automatic cropping
Paper, 2014
"Data-Driven Automatic Cropping for Semantic Composition Search"
Armin Samii, Zhe Lin, and Radomir Měch
Computer Graphics Forum 2014
Armin Samii, Zhe Lin, and Radomir Měch
Computer Graphics Forum 2014
ARCSIM: Adaptive Remeshing for Cloth Sim
Paper, 2012
"Adaptive Anisotropic Remeshing for Cloth Simulation"
Rahul Narain, Armin Samii, and James F. O'Brien
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2012
Rahul Narain, Armin Samii, and James F. O'Brien
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2012
Image Sorter
Thesis, 2010
Sorts through your photo library. Automatically detects low-quality and repetitive photos, sorting photographs in a way that prioritizes both uniqueness and quality. Winner of the Huffman Prize.
Garden Path
Research Application, 2011
For some pairs of flickering gradients, you will see a strip in the center where it appears to be static, called the "Garden Path". I built a simple Qt+OpenGL app to generate Garden Paths.
Bartending
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Murder Mystery Party
Cocktail Menu, 2018
Each murder mystery participant was themed after a specific color, Clue-style.
birthday party
Cocktail Menu, 2017
Each drink is based on an item in his resume.
Avametric Holiday Party
Cocktail Menu, 2015
At the time of this party, we had two teams, Team Green and Team Hippocorn, as well as a leaky roof.
CSGSA Masked Ball
Cocktail Menu, 2013
CSGSA Halloween party, for Berkeley EECS grad students.
CSGSA Halloween Party
Cocktail Menu, 2012
The presidential election was around the corner when the CSGSA (Computer Science Graduate Student Association at Berkeley) had its halloween party.
Get in touch
I am Very Online™ and only a month or two behind the Good Good Memes. I even had a TikTok once. I recommend you follow me on Twitter, though feel free to choose another presence:
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