Projects
Projects
A mix of research, hackathon wins, and things I built to learn. A thread runs through the work I'm proudest of: engineering for accessibility, technology that helps people who are too often designed around.
Featured
Recognition: Outstanding Exhibit, UIUC Undergraduate Research Symposium 2025; Honorable Mention, URS 2024
ScribeAR: real-time transcription for accessibility
ScribeAR is a real-time transcription and augmented-reality captioning research project at UIUC, built to make spaces like classrooms accessible through live captions. I implemented a Whisper.cpp speech-to-text backend that brought transcription down to ~2 seconds per sentence, built a React hook for Whisper API calls (with controls for softness, speed, and history), and researched speaker identification, diarization, and audio classification.
Stack: OpenAI Whisper (Whisper.cpp), React, speech-to-text, diarization
UrbanHawx: facial recognition, live (HackIllinois 2022, Top 5)
Facial detection and recognition software that tells a safe, registered user apart from an unknown one in a live feed, using eye, face, and smile detection to differentiate people. Built in Python with OpenCV. Placed Top 5 at HackIllinois 2022.
Stack: Python, OpenCV, computer vision
Indoor Navigation for Visually Impaired Users
Indoors, there's no GPS to fall back on, so someone who can't see the room has very little to navigate by. This system reads the space through the camera instead: it runs real-time object detection to recognise doors, stairs, furniture, and obstacles, then speaks what's ahead and where it is so the user can move through an unfamiliar building on their own. I paired Mask R-CNN for detailed instance segmentation with a lighter SSD MobileNet model for fast on-device inference, and turned the detections into short, spoken cues rather than a screen full of boxes. The whole thing is built around one question: what does a person actually need to hear to take the next step safely?
Stack: Python, Mask R-CNN, SSD MobileNet, object detection, text-to-speech voice output
More projects
MoodSpot
Take a selfie, and MoodSpot reads your mood and generates a matching Spotify playlist. Built in Dart (Flutter) as a CS 222 group project at UIUC.
Pandemic TD Battles
A 3D tower-defense PC game inspired by pandemic scenarios: deploy defenses against waves of pathogens. Built in Unity and C#, with a focus on gameplay mechanics, AI behavior, and interactive 3D environments.
RuntimeTerror
Turns old devices into a home security system: it records and analyzes the feed, raises an alarm, and messages the owner a photo or video of the intruder. Supports remote control and Alexa.
BlockTix
A marketplace for reselling tickets, verified on the blockchain. It records every ticket transaction for an event and identifies resellers, treating tickets like smart contracts: "programmable money," where on-chain logic manages the revenue collected and the tickets themselves live as tokens in a buyer's wallet.
Finding Water Fountains
A UIUC sustainability project that nudges people toward the nearest water fountain instead of single-use plastic bottles, pairing incentives with a map to the closest refill point.