Tyler T. Procko, Ph.D.
Ontology-Based AI Engineer — LLM Agents · NLP · BFO/CCO · Knowledge Graphs · Cybersecurity · Test-Driven Development
Florida, USA · Remote | 1-904-557-8383
prockotyler@gmail.com | prockot@my.erau.edu
Last updated May 5, 2026 – View live version
Summary
Ph.D researcher, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) award winner, and AI engineer specializing in ontology-grounded LLM systems and agentic software development. 9+ years building knowledge graphs, BFO/CCO-compliant ontologies, and ML pipelines for defense and aerospace. Designing LLM agents that reason over structured knowledge — RAG, provenance tracking, and explainability backed by formal ontologies. Active contributor to AFRL, IEEE, and DoD FAIR AI standardization.
Education
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) – Daytona Beach, FL
• Ph.D., CS & Electrical Engineering — Dissertation: On the Provenance of Software Systems: Automating Software Traceability with Knowledge Graph and Large Language Model Synergy
• GitHub: github.com/PR0CK0/ProvTracer
• M.S., Software Engineering — Thesis: Towards Agile Academia: An Approach to Scientific Paper Writing Inspired by Software Engineering
• B.S., Software Engineering — Summa Cum Laude · Minor: Cybersecurity Engineering
Work Experience
Principal Knowledge Architect – Stealth Startup » Remote
•Leading ontology design, NLP model selection, embedding/vector use, and LLM integration (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, Bedrock) for a stealth-stage cybersecurity product.
•Built a sub-500ms engine that translates natural language to structured queries using async multi-provider LLM retry logic (Ollama, Claude, GPT).
•Engineered an adapter-driven pipeline mapping heterogeneous vocabularies into a coherent ontology for reasoning and lookup.
•Built a provider-agnostic LLM evaluation testbed with configurable tasks, weighted scoring (latency, cost, size, accuracy), and stakeholder-ready HTML reports with interactive charts.
Nov 2025 –
Present
Independent AI Consultant – Handshake AI » Remote
•Contributed expert RLHF and evaluation work to improve LLM output quality for production-grade generative AI systems.
Nov 2025 –
Present
AI Research Scientist — Ontology-Grounded ML and Autonomous Systems – Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) » Rome, NY · Hybrid · Remote
•Conducted six years of sponsored research under the DoD SMART Scholarship program in ML provenance, knowledge graph engineering, and ontology design for defense AI applications.
•Engineered ML provenance capture for real-time autonomous systems pipelines, modeling data lineage with PROV-O/PROV-ML ontologies and CVAT-annotated imagery to support AI model training.
•Designed a JSON-LD proto-ontology for computer vision task provenance, synthesizing military documentation into interoperable, schema-aligned representations.
•Aligned a defense ML ontology to BFO/CCO compliance, delivering a competency-question-ready knowledge base enabling SME queries over ML and defense operational concepts in GraphDB.
•Derived novel geospatial relationships linking SUMO ontology entities with ADE20K scene annotations and WKT geometries, enabling spatial inferencing over computer vision data.
•Generated semantic XAI explanations for ML model outputs using DL-Learner and ontological background knowledge, advancing interpretability for defense AI pipelines.
•Boosted semantic knowledge graphs with ML-derived topic models; built an ontology quality assessment framework delivering actionable intelligence products for Air Force analysts.
May 2019 –
Nov 2025
Ontology & AI Systems Consultant – Independent Contract » Remote
•Delivered knowledge graph, ontology engineering, and agentic AI solutions for clients including Quiet Professionals and WordLift SEO, spanning defense intelligence, nuclear systems, construction, legal, media analytics, and higher education domains.
•Engineered BFO/CCO/PROV-O-aligned semantic data models for DoD-grade interoperability; deployed GraphDB, Stardog, and Neo4j triple stores for traceability and RAG-style retrieval.
•Built Python pipelines integrating LLM APIs (GPT, Claude) with OWL/RDF reasoning for automated ontology population, entity linking, and ML lifecycle provenance.
•Designed SHACL/SPARQL validation and reasoning workflows; produced GeoSPARQL analyses against large geospatial ontologies.
•Authored academic-grade technical documentation and ontology deliverables; co-published a peer-reviewed paper on AI-assisted knowledge representation.
•Consulted on LLM deployment strategy for DoD use cases and agentic AI-assisted technical writing workflows for early-stage startups.
Jan 2023 –
Present
AI Research Team Lead and Semantic Web Consultant – ERAU » Daytona Beach, FL
•Led and contributed to research across ML, NLP, Linked Data, and cybersecurity, co-authoring numerous peer-reviewed publications centered on Semantic Web technologies.
•Served as Semantic Web consultant for fellow researchers, providing technical guidance on knowledge representation and supporting paper review and revision.
Jan 2019 –
Present
Projects – GitHub
• Automated AI release digest — aggregates 10+ feeds, deduplicates, and summarizes on login or on a 6-hour cloud cron via GitHub Actions. Works with Ollama, Claude, Codex, or Gemini.
Mar 2026
• End-to-end biomedical paper analysis: VLM figure digitization + NER. Evaluated against HuggingFace VLMs, Ollama, and cloud providers; SotA NER models including GLiNER, DistilBERT, and spaCy.
Mar 2026
• BFO-aligned, evidence-graded knowledge graph for health optimization interventions. LinkML schema with OWL/RDF and TypeScript targets; MeSH-grounded for RxNorm, SNOMED CT, and GO compatibility. React/Cytoscape.js UI.
Mar 2026
• A PyPI package implementing a multi-LLM ensemble debate framework. Routes prompts across Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, and any LiteLLM-compatible provider; surfaces disagreements across models and synthesizes a consensus answer.
Mar 2026
• Simple, browser-based, Cytoscape.js interactive graph view of the Open Cybersecurity Framework.
Feb 2026
• Terminal-themed portfolio and knowledge graph explorer — React/TypeScript/Vite, driven by a single YAML source file.
Nov 2024
• Terminal quiz game for cert exam prep. Beat mode, combo scoring, burning fuse timer. Security+ deck included.
Apr 2026
AI Config GitHub
• Agent config for ontology-driven LLM development. One source, minimal surface, secure by default.
Apr 2026
Publications – Google Scholar
41 peer-reviewed publications · Scientific Writing, Knowledge Graphs, Software Engineering, LLMs, Semantic Web, Ontology Google Scholar
Certifications
Security+ – CompTIA [In Progress]
N/A
Machine Learning – Upwork
Oct 2024
Machine Learning Specialization – Stanford DeepLearning.AI
Jan 2024
MLOps Essentials: Model Deployment and Monitoring – LinkedIn Learning
Jun 2023
MLOps Essentials: Model Development and Integration – LinkedIn Learning
Jun 2023
Remote Work Professional – CertiProf
Mar 2023
Data Analytics Professional – Google
Nov 2022
Technical Skills
Programming Languages: Python, Java, C, CSS, Markdown, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, Matlab, Bash, C#, Fortran, Rust, R, Racket, Assembly, Lisp, Julia
Data Languages: OWL, RDF, Turtle, RDFS, SPARQL, XML, TriG, YAML, JSON, CSV, JSON-LD, SQL, JSON Schema, SHACL, SWRL, RDFa, GeoSPARQL, LinkML, GIS, TSV
Libraries & Frameworks: OpenAI, Hugging Face, RDFLib, PyTorch, Transformers, scikit-learn, JavaFX, JDBC, NumPy, Matplotlib, spaCy, Cytoscape.js, PyYAML, Swing, Pandas, React, Anthropic SDK, Node.js, pdfplumber, Plotly
Development Tools: GitHub, Visual Studio Code, Protégé, GraphDB, GitHub CLI, Eclipse, Jira, Kanban, Stardog, Confluence, Neo4j, Arduino, MySQL, Git, Code::Blocks, PostGIS, PHPMyAdmin, QGIS, Docker, VxWorks
Office Tools: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, LaTeX, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Slides, Google Sheets, ProPresenter
Communication Tools: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Slack, Session, Signal
AI Tools: GPT, Claude, Gemini, Codex, Ollama, Stable Diffusion, BERT, DistilBERT, SD WebUI, ADE20K, RoBERTa, ALBERT, Mixture of Agents, REBEL, YOLO, ImageNet, Anthropic, Grok, DALL-E, LoRA
Ontologies, Vocabularies & Standards: BFO, PROV-O, CCO, SKOS, Schema.org, UFO, GFO, SWEBOK, ANNETTO, DCTerms, OCSF, PROV-ML, OntoDM, MLSchema, SUMO, ANNO, FOAF, WordNet, IAO, DOLCE
Cloud & Deployment: GitHub Actions, GitHub Pages, AWS S3, AWS Bedrock
Design & Analysis Tools: Draw.io, Balsamiq, Mockingbird, Adobe Photoshop, Tableau, RStudio, Mermaid, Miro, Figma, vMix, Adobe Illustrator
Government Clearances
I am cleared for Secret T3 but do not continually retain an explicit clearance.