Joshua AllenTalbott

I lead technology for a Kent State college of 21+ departments. Along the way I’ve built AI tools people can trust, helped bring a Florentine sculpture to Ellis Island, invented products and filed my own patents, shipped apps, kept a live TV station on the air, and taught seven university courses.

Portrait of Joshua Allen Talbott
Role
Director of Technology, College of Sciences and Humanities, Kent State University
Scope
21+ departments across 19+ buildings; research computing and HPC
Kent State
More than twenty years; director since 2022
Degree
Master of Technology, Kent State University

All work LinkedIn (opens in a new tab) GitHub (opens in a new tab)

Leadership

Ten years leading IT for Kent State’s College of Sciences and Humanities, the full span of the sciences and humanities. Director of Technology since 2022.

  • One front door for support

    Replaced a dozen private inboxes with one intake funnel in FreshService, routed by zone (West, Center, East, and Math & CS), so a small department gets the same care as a large one. The college later reorganized its administration around the zone approach.

  • Research computing

    The college’s interface for high-performance computing: on-premises clusters, Open OnDemand, and connections to the Ohio Supercomputer Center for classes and researchers, through the university’s rise to R1.

  • Infrastructure

    Rebuilt inherited systems into a hub-and-spoke environment across Azure, AWS, and on-premises data centers, covering virtual desktops, research storage, and endpoint security.

  • Regulated research

    Support survey research labs under HIPAA controls and advise researchers on federal security requirements, such as NIST SP 800-171 self-assessments for Department of Defense awards and NIH attestations.

  • People

    Supervise the team leader and two IT support experts, and run a four-tier student analyst program that takes students from any major to lead roles. Plenty of technology careers started here.

AI

I run AI on university hardware and design tools where the model interprets what someone wants and auditable code produces the answer.

  • A university-hosted AI platform

    Open-weight models from Qwen and NVIDIA served with vLLM on NVIDIA Grace Blackwell hardware, behind Open WebUI with retrieval, private search, notebooks, and image generation. About six colleagues use it, and a cloud engineer runs his own workloads on it.

  • Guardrails by design

    Data Lens turns plain-language questions into charts. When testing caught the model inventing a table, I redesigned it so the model can’t state any number it didn’t retrieve from a real query.

  • Built with the people who use it

    Colleagues bring problems to see whether AI can help. Earmark, a project tracker, was built with an audiovisual engineer. Lens and Notebook Lens put live web data and research notebooks in front of people who don’t write code.

  • Computer vision for research and teaching

    A bird-species detector running on a Cornell Lab live stream, built with a birding expert from eBird and iNaturalist data, with human review so students verify AI guesses rather than rubber-stamp them.

  • Transpose

    Paste any passage and read it at six vocabulary levels, side by side. The same meaning, adjusted for the reader.

    Open Transpose

  • An open guide to a private AI stack

    A ten-step field guide to running chat, images, agents, code execution, and search on one machine, with no data leaving the box. The configuration is open source.

    Read the Zero to Hero AI stack guide View the Self-hosted AI Stack repository (opens in a new tab)

Libertas

Pio Fedi’s Liberty of Poetry (1883) could not leave Florence’s Basilica of Santa Croce, so she traveled as data. Kent State rebuilt her at 80% scale for Sisters in Liberty at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, 2019–2020.

The Liberty of Poetry replica standing at the end of the exhibit hall at Ellis Island
The replica holding the sightline at the end of the hall, Ellis Island.

My part was the path from marble to object:

  • Led the 3D capture in Florence: more than 100 passes with a structured-light scanner on a monopod
  • Aligned the scans into one mesh and rebuilt the crown’s rays in Fusion 360
  • Ran the sightline, scale, and weight studies that set her at 80% and kept her within the museum floor’s load limit
  • Evaluated every manufacturing method before we chose binder-jetted sand
  • Built the project website and supported the poetry kiosks

It was a collaborative effort across architecture, engineering, the physics shop, student fabricators, a Youngstown print house, the Wick Poetry Center, and the National Park Service. The full account credits everyone by name.

Read the full Libertas account Kent State Magazine (opens in a new tab) Forbes (opens in a new tab)

Original
Pio Fedi, Liberty of Poetry, 1883, Santa Croce, Florence
Capture
100+ structured-light scans on site
Scale
80%, printed in three sections
Body
Binder-jetted sand, painted to read as marble
Crown
Cast aluminum, painted to read as bronze
Shown
Ellis Island, 2019–2020; nominated for Best International Exhibit

Ventures

I start companies to learn how products, brands, and intellectual property actually work, then do that work myself.

TuTTi Bar™

A handlebar mount for a Bluetooth speaker, born from the fact that nobody made a good one. I designed and 3D-printed the prototypes, tested them on real rides, built the brand, and wrote and filed the patent and trademark applications myself, drafting them with AI. It’s on the shelf at a local bike shop.

tuttibar.com (opens in a new tab)

Drag to turn the model.

VUEMesh Founder and CTO, 2014–2018

Automatic editing across many camera feeds, conceived around 2011, years before AI tools made it easy. I built the proof of concept and the app, filed a utility patent, and pitched it to venture capitalists and to GoPro.

vuemesh.com (opens in a new tab)

Duh Industries

The umbrella for experiments that don’t fit a job description, where hardware, software, sound, and story get to collide.

duhindustries.com (opens in a new tab) duh.live (opens in a new tab) duh.video (opens in a new tab)

Apps

From native iPad apps to browser tools that need no account, no install, and no subscription. Each one started with a problem I actually had.

Learning

Data and media

The music apps came from practice: I’m a guitarist and keep my voice in training.

Broadcast

Before IT, I spent the better part of a decade keeping Kent State student television on the air, where nothing gets a second take.

  • An all-digital HD newsroom 2007–2013

    Joined Franklin Hall’s new studio during commissioning, then ran it: three to five shows a day, a nightly county newscast, and live election coverage. I automated the control room with Python and AppleScript so a student crew could run it.

    Kent State Magazine, Summer 2008 (opens in a new tab)

  • TV2, Station of the Year

    TV2 won the College Media Association’s Pinnacle for TV Station of the Year in 2012 and 2013, my final two years there. The trophies belong to the students; the room they came out of is the part I built.

    The award announcement (opens in a new tab)

  • Master control for campus sports

    Spearheaded fiber between Franklin Hall and the MAC Center with Teleproductions, turning a student control room into master control for live sports.

  • Live sports and events 2009–2014

    Replay, technical direction, camera shading, graphics, and audio for college football and basketball across the Midwest, some of it on ESPN3.

Teaching

Seven courses across journalism, film, manufacturing, and emerging media. The method never changed: put the tool in someone’s hands and stay until they’ve made something real.

  • Videography Basics I and II

    School of Journalism and Mass Communication

  • Avid Media Composer certification

    Taught as an Avid Certified Instructor

  • Cinema editing

    Co-taught with Dave Smeltzer; the class cut a student feature film to a premiere

  • Web Programming for Multimedia Journalism

    Co-taught with Jacqueline Marino; Python and Django for data-driven storytelling

  • Computer-Aided Manufacturing

    College of Aeronautics and Engineering; from G-code in the simulator to industrial mills

  • Creative Coding

    School of Emerging Media and Technology; co-taught with Ava Aviva Avnisan, online and in a projection space I built

Path

Working since thirteen, in restaurant kitchens first, then vocational electronics in high school. Kent State has been the constant since. Lighter entries ran alongside the main job.

  1. 2022–nowDirector of TechnologyKent State University, College of Sciences and Humanities (formerly Arts and Sciences)
  2. 2017–2019DeveloperStudio51VFX
  3. 2016–2022Team Leader, ITKent State University, College of Arts and Sciences
  4. 2016–2018iOS developerLucy Jr
  5. 2014–2018Founder and CTOVUEMesh
  6. 2013–2016Lead IT User Support AnalystKent State University, College of Communication and Information
  7. 2011–2022Adjunct facultyJournalism, Aeronautics and Engineering, and Emerging Media and Technology
  8. 2009–2014Freelance broadcast engineerPrism Video Group
  9. 2007–2013Senior Media SpecialistKent State University, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
  10. 2005–2007Senior Electronics TechnicianKent State University, Education Technology and Distance Learning
  11. 2005–2007Electronics TechnicianAlphaMicron, circuits for liquid-crystal eyewear
  12. 2002–2005Student broadcast engineerKent State Teleproductions and student media

Education

  • Master of Technology, Manufacturing and Management, Kent State University, 2012
  • Bachelor’s degree in Technology, cum laude, Kent State University, 2007
  • Associate degree in Technology, Kent State University, 2005

Credentials

  • ITIL Foundation, IT Service Management
  • Avid Certified Instructor
  • FCC amateur radio license, KC8ZZF

Open work

Ideas published to teach and to provoke, not to pitch.

Distributed rapid initial attack for wildfires

Detection is largely solved; the response layer isn’t. This open concept stages autonomous suppression aircraft at regional airports and launches them the moment an ignition is verified, with Ohio as the proof of concept. The concept paper makes the case, and the First Strike simulator lets you run it.

Read the concept paper (PDF) Run the First Strike simulator

Independent work offered in a personal capacity, not a proposal from or endorsement by any employer or agency. Simulator figures are illustrative and meant for teaching.

Contact

I’ve always been less interested in technology itself than in what people can create with it. Josh Talbott
Joshua Allen Talbott, Kent, Ohio Personal site.