Hello! I'm Syd.

I am a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Computer Science and Visual Art at the University of Chicago. My interests include high-performance, low-level systems programming, distributed systems, and networks.

Over the summer of 2017, I was working at Adobe on their Digital Media Architecture team as a software engineer intern.

I am passionate about closing the gender gap in tech and I have worked largely with Girls Who Code and FEMMES (Females Excelling More in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science). For more details feel free to check out my engagement page.

Education

The University of Chicago - June 2018
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
GPA: 3.6

Awards and Scholarships

Maroon Key Society
Student Leadership Award
Dean's List 2015
Dean's List 2016
Yahoo GHC Scholar
Adobe Research WIT Scholarship Honorable Mention

Relevant Coursework

Computer Networks
Distributed Systems
Computer Security
Computer Systems
Computer Architecture
Functional Programming
Algorithms
Discrete Mathematics

Skills

C
Java
Python
HTML/CSS
Javascript
Standard ML
Typed Racket
Git Version Control

Experience


  • Lead Teacher Girls Who Code
  • Software Engineer Intern Adobe
  • Grader University of Chicago

Seattle, WA

July 2016 - September 2016

  • Youngest qualified Lead Teacher in the nation.
  • Experienced in teaching a classroom of twenty students the fundamentals of computer science through a project-based curriculum.
  • Responsible for managing a classroom to construct a positive and open learning environment.
  • Taught OOP, Loops, Variables, Conditionals, Data Structures, Web Development, Robotics, and various APIs.

Seattle, WA

June 2017 - September 2017

  • Worked with senior engineers on the Digital Composite Technology team to build a cross-platform library for optimal file synchronization with Adobe's Creative Cloud.
  • Implemented optimization of Digital Composite Snapshot imports, decreasing average import time across Mac and Windows platforms.
  • Developed testing framework in C to analyze network transfer behaviour of HTTP/2 multiplexing versus parallel HTTP/1.1 connections when sending large amounts of data in small file sizes.

Chicago, IL

September 2015 - March 2017

  • Classes Graded: Introduction to Computer Science I, Introduction to Computer Science II, and Computer Networks.
  • Efficiently graded homework, projects, and exams for 180+ students.
  • Managed grading repositories using GitLab as well as Python scripts and Subversion.
  • Provided constructive feedback on assignments and improved individual student performance.
  • Formed valuable relationships with CS faculty members and peers.

To view a more comprehensive list of my past experiences, please visit my LinkedIn.

Projects

Life of the Mind
  • Designed miniature world game controlled by speedometer and EEG data collected by a Muse headband.
  • Built using Unity game engine in C#.
  • Awarded "Most UChicago" prize

    • Obama Search
  • Constructed an rudimentary image search engine that traverses Twitter images.
  • Crawls through the html pages of political Twitter profiles, starting with Obama.
  • Utilized the Google Cloud Vision API to search for relevant images.

    • Please feel free to contact me to learn more about my projects or click here to see a list of my completed course projects.