ALEX SEVERINGHAUS

About Me

---

I am a sophomore at the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering, pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering & Computer Science. I am interested in a career in software engineering, and my dual background in both computer engineering and computer science provides me with a unique perspective in this field. Outside of school, I love surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, and am a big San Diego Padres fan!

Experience

---

• Designed object-oriented software to perform experiment that reduced costs of scientific projects by ~$300,000
• Implemented Python parsing functions to manipulate a large ocean modeling data set of ~200,000 entries
• Visualized Pareto frontiers to maximize effectiveness and minimize cost of experimental float arrays
• Recommended an optimized sensor distribution of biogeochemical Argo floats to best observe the ocean
• Managed Python packages for improved file handling, large-scale data modeling, and statistical analysis

• Selected for a prestigious funded undergraduate research program in USC Viterbi's Interaction Lab
• Build socially assistive robots using Raspberry Pi to provide study companions for users with ADHD
• Implement Gaussian Process reinforcement learning in Python to personalize robot behavior to user preferences
• Collaborate with 10+ PhD and ~50 other student researchers to better implement hardware and software design

• Shadowed an optical engineer to execute marketing strategies for a local camera and optics company
• Created individual HTML/CSS product pages and advanced search engine optimization for ~50 lenses
• Developed product catalogs and spreadsheets to improve outreach, recording precise engineering specifications

Projects

---

• Created a Java/React-based web app to promote USC rideshare with login functionality using MySQL schema
• Interfaced asynchronous frontend calls to Java servlets and Google Maps API features with AJAX framework
• Led a diverse team of 8 other CS students, coordinating Git version control for effective development strategies

• Designed end-to-end IoT system to collect data on Raspberry Pi and send data via MQTT for remote processing
• Performed signal processing in Python to analyze noise level then visualized results with Python-controlled LED

• Constructed this full-stack web app to highlight personal experiences and projects using Python Flask backend
• Built a coherent user interface with HTML/CSS frontend; deployed website with Amazon Web Services EC2

• Built a Keras Sequential neural network in Python to predict market trends using Yahoo Finance API
• Implemented rolling mean/volatility features to assess recent price behavior, improving performance by ~25%
• Reduced overfitting tendencies by adding dropout layers, L2 regularization, and adjusting the train/test split

Skills

---

• Languages: Python, Java, C/C++, SQL, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Unix Shell
• Technologies: VS Code, Eclipse, Git, MySQL, AWS, Docker, IntelliJ, Virtual Machines, Raspberry Pi, Arduino
• Frameworks: TensorFlow, Keras, Sklearn, React, Jakarta EE, AJAX, Flask