Hi, I'm Alessa. I'm a Senior at the University of Chicago studying Computer Science, with a specialization in Computer Security. My interests include cryptography, natural language processing, and decision theory.

Recent Work

Machine Learning Engineer @ PayPal

[June 2019 - Sept 2019] Over 12 weeks, I built a neural net-based AI assistant with automated debugging capabilities for PayPal's Analytics team. This entailed training a deep learning model on the company's Slack channel and FAQ page using primarily the Rasa framework and TensorFlow. The assistant answers recurring questions, automatically identifies and fixes common bugs in code, and hand-holds developers through various troubleshooting processes. Integrated the assistant with PayPal's corporate Slack channel, a custom web UI, and deployed the model using Google Cloud Platform.

compileHer

[Jun 2017 - Oct 2019] Head of Professor Outreach at compileHer, a student-run organization dedicated to achieving gender parity in technology by teaching Computer Science to middle school girls in Chicago's South Side. Here I was in charge of securing professor volunteers at all of our events (hackathon, field trips, coding workshops). As former Operations Manager, I also drafted grants to the UChicago Women’s Board to fund our events.

Venmo Hackathon 2019

[Aug 2019] 3rd Place at Venmo's "Make Money Less Awkward"-themed intern hackathon.

Sonify

[Mar 2019] Developed a mobile app for Android (in Java) that visualizes musical beats through colored lights for live concerts. Sonify records a song, converts to a WAV file to extract sound energy, computes beats per minute (bpm), then flashes light accordingly. I leveraged the sound energy of a file by computing its instantaneous sound energy and calculating a rolling average energy over a window of time.

Software Engineer @ FUSE

[Jun 2018 - Aug 2018] Front-end iOS development for social media app FUSE, a member of the Polsky Accelerator Cohort 2018. Here I built functionality that allows users to fetch content from various social media and news sources, drag content to and watch live videos in group chats.

Coursework