Nurture Labs LLC · Pawnee, Illinois

hayden masters

I build systems that run where nobody's watching — local-first, self-hosted, owned end to end.

From a town of 2,700 — Pawnee, Illinois — where I spent my nights in the terminal instead of anywhere else. I'm Hayden Masters: founder of Nurture Labs LLC, computer science student, network consultant, AI researcher, and threat intelligence researcher.

In early 2026 I converted every Claude conversation I'd ever had into a structured Obsidian knowledge graph. 1,474 conversations. The graph had one clear center: the Gender category, surrounded by everything else. Data doesn't lie. It just sometimes takes a while to read it.

Whether it's a persistent AI with an emotional memory, a public-records platform pointed at the institution instead of at residents, or a P2P camera protocol taken apart byte by byte — I build things that carry me in them. That's always been the point.

0 emotion-tagged memory nodes in Aida
0 botnet victims taken to zero
0 endpoints managed solo
0 selected for the LRS internship

One organism, many organs.

Everything I run is one connected system — a private cloud out of Pawnee. An AI with a brain-inspired memory, a listening RF mesh, a public-records platform, and the two Kubernetes clusters underneath. Hover a node to trace it.

AIDA Persistent AI agent — the center of the system. Hover a node to inspect.

Things I've built.

What I reach for.

Infrastructure & Cloud

Kubernetes / Talos NixOS Flux GitOps Proxmox FortiGate UniFi VMware ESXi Active Directory OPNsense

Security & Intel

OSINT / Threat Intel Reverse Engineering Burp Suite Frida / jadx Wazuh / SIEM Security Onion Ghidra mitmproxy

Engineering

Python Rust TypeScript Go AI / LLM Systems FastAPI Next.js Solidity C / Embedded

Systems & Signals

RTL-SDR / RF Home Assistant Asterisk PBX Klipper / 3D Printing whisper.cpp ham radio

From a town of 2,700.

May 2026 – Present

Network Consultant Intern

LRS · Lincoln, IL

1 of 31 selected from 381 applicants. Enterprise networking and infrastructure consulting on the SBTS team — FortiGate 60F hands-on (toward NSE4), SentinelOne, real MSP client work.

March 2026 – Present

Founder & Lead Researcher

Nurture Labs LLC

SAM.gov registered (UEI: P8DCFFTG4BX6), Apple Business Manager enrolled. Pursuing NSF SBIR Phase I — biologically-inspired cognitive architecture and on-premise LLM inference for data sovereignty. UIS Orion Lab (NVIDIA-donated compute) as research base; IP fully retained by Nurture Labs.

January 2026

Threat Intelligence Researcher

Independent · briefed FBI Springfield

Discovered a 1,544-victim international cryptojacking botnet, documented it, and briefed the FBI directly. IC3 report filed. Reduced to zero active workers by January 27.

Aug 2026 →

Computer Science, transfer path

LLCC → UIS (Star Scholar, $7k/yr) → UIUC

AA in Computer Science, 4.0, Phi Theta Kappa. Continuing to the University of Illinois Springfield on the Star Scholar Award, aiming at UIUC and a cybersecurity PhD.

May 2023 – Aug 2025

IT Infrastructure Intern

Pawnee Jr/Sr High School

Solo management of 800+ Windows endpoints. FortiGate, UniFi, VMware ESXi, Active Directory and Group Policy, wireless AP installs, server operations, and a 1,000+ device inventory across the district.

Class of 2026

Pawnee High School

Pawnee, Illinois

4.548 weighted GPA, 3rd in class, 33 ACT. Illinois State Scholar, National Honor Society, College Board National Recognition Program.

Let's build something.

From a town of 2,700 — building things that matter.

Designed & built by Hayden Masters · Vite · Three.js · anime.js