hi, my name is melody! i'm a junior at usc studying computer engineering and computer science. i have a huge range of interests, ranging from ai for cybersecurity, to traditional swe, to embedded systems and biomedical research! i'm currently focusing primarily on the intersection of machine learning and systems: developing benchmarks for evaluating llms as security threats, building out my own startup in the art consulting space, and working hard on projects at ibm!
starter pack facts
May 2026 – Aug 2026
Software Engineer Intern
I built a pipeline that reads new Keycloak issues and pull requests and brings the ones needing attention to the top. With more than 6,000 contributors and 2,500 open issues, the hard part was making the retrieval and prompts useful enough that maintainers would trust the results.
Jan 2026 – Jun 2026
Solo Founder
I started Artery to help hotel designers find artists and artwork that fit a project brief. I built the product, made the prototypes, and put together the pitch. Microsoft for Startups backed us.
Aug 2025 – Present
Research Assistant, URAP Awardee
I proposed this project to get a clearer picture of what open-source models can do on security tasks. I test them on their own, then see how their results change after additional training on examples from larger models.
Embedded Systems Engineer Intern
Jan 2026 – May 2026
Worked on the robot’s embedded software and its web dashboard. I added SLAM and used camera, gyroscope, and speed data to help the robot plan its path.
Research Assistant, URAP Awardee
Aug 2025 – May 2026
Built deep learning models that use molecular structure data to predict pMHC-TCR binding.
Data Science Intern
Jun 2024 – Dec 2024
Studied how gene activity changes with age and how those changes relate to the breakdown of gene regulation. Presented the work at the 10th Aging & Gerontology Conference in San Francisco.
Machine Learning Intern
Feb 2022 – May 2024
Built a model that predicts gene expression from DNA sequence and improved the lab's previous results by up to 15% in some cell types. I contributed to a second-author paper now under review at Nature Genetics and presented the work at the 2023 Sigma Xi IFoRE conference.
983contributions in the last year
research @ kundaje lab, stanford university
jul 2023
A bimodal deep-learning framework built on BPNet that combines DNA sequence with chromatin environment to predict where transcription begins. view on github →
research @ su lab, scripps research
oct 2025
Implements and compares ways to measure transcriptomic aging - drift variance, transcriptional noise, cell-type balance, and differential expression. view on github →
personal project
aug 2026
A desktop pet that wanders your screen and eats whatever you drop on it - links, YouTube videos, selected text - saving each straight into an Obsidian vault. view on github →
