Hi, I am

Nicholas
Chen

EECS @ UC Berkeley — AI/ML & Quantitative Research

Tech Stack

(hint: press a key)

Education

Academic background.

University of California, Berkeley

B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Expected May 2028

GPA 3.8/4.0

  • Optimization Models (EECS 127)
  • Probability & Discrete Math (CS 70)
  • Deep Learning (CS 182)
  • In progress: Probability & Random Processes (EE 126), Linear Algebra (Math 110), Algorithms (CS 170), Machine Learning (CS 189)

Experience

My professional journey.

AI/ML & Quantitative Research Engineer

UC Berkeley — Operations & Behavioral Analytics Lab
Sep 2025 - Present
  • Built a reinforcement-learning system (DQN: reward shaping, experience replay, target networks) and the full experiment + data pipeline (SvelteKit/Firebase) over 85 participants and 1,000+ rounds.
  • Clustered behavior into 5 statistically separable decision policies (8× outcome spread, F=276) and ran offline policy evaluation.
  • Fixed-effects causal inference showed payout salience raised suboptimal choices by 71 percentage points with no measurable learning across 15 rounds.
  • First author, in preparation (targeting ACM CHI 2027); presented with Prof. Sinchaisri at Stanford and CMU.
PythonPython
PyTorchPyTorch
JavaScriptJavaScript
TypeScriptTypeScript
FirebaseFirebase

Data Engineering Intern

Shenwan Hongyuan Securities
Jan 2025 - Feb 2025
  • Built and hardened large-scale equities market-data pipelines across multi-terabyte tick and daily-bar feeds with billions of rows.
  • Optimized Spark/Pandas processing over partitioned Parquet for 20% faster runtime and automated ETL with Airflow.
  • Tuned PostgreSQL performance and supported Redis caching and Dockerized services for production data workflows.
PythonPython
SQLSQL
PandasPandas
NumPyNumPy
PostgreSQLPostgreSQL
DockerDocker

Machine Learning Researcher

MIT — Pentelute Lab
Feb 2023 - Apr 2024
  • Built a deep generative + reinforcement-learning stack in PyTorch with diffusion sampling and policy/value methods over a multi-objective reward.
  • First-authored a peer-reviewed paper on AI-driven molecular design (DOI: 10.36838/v7i4.29).
PythonPython
PyTorchPyTorch
NumPyNumPy
PandasPandas

Computational Research — Ranked 1st of 45

University of Oxford
Dec 2023 - Jan 2024
  • Built Monte Carlo, stochastic-process, and time-series models of nonlinear biochemical systems.
  • Implemented PCA, k-means, and random-forest pipelines for computational research workflows.
PythonPython
C++C++
NumPyNumPy
PandasPandas
scikit-learnscikit-learn

Awards

Competitions and achievements.

2024
USACO Gold
2024
International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) 2024 — National Camp Member
2021
Australian Mathematical Competition – 1× Medal (1/5000) & Top in Auckland City, 3× High Distinction
2024
New Zealand Mathematical Olympiad Camp Member; New Zealand Senior Maths Competition 1st Place
2024
New Zealand Young Physicists' Tournament 2nd Place
2023
New Zealand Young Physicists' Tournament 3rd Place
2023
New Zealand Physics and Maths Competition 7th Place; International Young Physicists' Tournament Qualifier
2024
New Zealand Chemistry Olympiad – 2× Gold Medal, 1× Silver Medal; National Exam Full Score Achiever
2024
International Chemistry Olympiad Qualifier; New Zealand Chemistry Olympiad National Team Member
2024
British Biology Olympiad Gold Medal; British Physics Olympiad Gold Medal; UK Chemistry Olympiad Gold Medal
BundleGame thumbnail

Research Platform

BundleGame

Live

SvelteKit and Firebase research app for studying delivery-order bundling decisions across a 50-round task, with participant telemetry, Qualtrics linkage, analytics exports, and offline-RL artifacts.

SvelteKit
Firebase
JavaScript
Analytics
Offline RL
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AI Safety Product

Manyr Agent Firewall

Live

Next.js product site and interactive policy playground for an agent-governance layer that evaluates tool calls, applies allow/deny/approval rules, and records audit trails.

Next.js
TypeScript
Tailwind
Framer Motion
AI Safety
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Full-Stack Pipeline

CivicGrid

Live

Voice-to-structured-data civic triage platform using Deepgram STT/TTS, LLM classification, Firebase, and a role-based dashboard for residents, contractors, and officials.

TypeScript
React
Python
Flask
Deepgram
LLM
Cross-Sectional Equity Signal Research thumbnail

Quant Research

Cross-Sectional Equity Signal Research

Research

Point-in-time S&P 500 study that caught and killed a survivorship artifact: a +8%/yr factor alpha (t ≈ 3.6) vanished under point-in-time membership; honest null with deflated Sharpe ≈ 0.35, independent re-derivation, and 50 unit tests.

Python
pandas
Walk-Forward CV
Newey-West
Fama-French
LinUCB
Personal Website thumbnail

Portfolio Website

Personal Website

Live

Next.js portfolio site with interactive 3D visuals, smooth scroll animation, project cards, contact flow, SEO metadata, and responsive presentation for AI/ML and quant research work.

Next.js
TypeScript
React
Tailwind
Spline
GSAP
AXIOM — Quant Research Backtesting Portfolio thumbnail

Quant Research

AXIOM — Quant Research Backtesting Portfolio

Research

Honest backtesting portfolio focused on signal design, leakage auditing, and model-risk controls, including deflated Sharpe and cost-aware evaluation.

Python
Backtesting
Leakage Audits
Model Risk
Sharpe

Contact

For research, ML, or engineering opportunities, reach me directly.