Alex Steele
Combined Honours in Computer Science and Physics
University of British Columbia
About
Hello! I’m Alex, a computer science and physics student at the University of British Columbia graduating in May 2024. My interests include embedded and low-level software development, reinforcement learning, and robotic motion control.
I’m currently working on my Honours Thesis with Michiel van de Panne. I’m also the lead teaching assistant for CPSC 110, UBC’s major-stream introductory computer science course, where I develop plagiarism detection algorithms and lead a team of TAs who work on infrastructure.
In my free time, I contribute to the UBC Rocket design team as a senior member of the avionics subteam, enjoy some light reading, and work on various side projects. I also help plan and volunteer at UBC’s annual Physics Olympics competition.
In the past, I’ve spent eight months as a crash safety software engineer intern at Tesla, four months as a numerical methods research assistant in UBC’s Numerical Linear Algebra Lab, and eight months as a satellite software engineer intern at Kepler Communications.
- Embedded Software
- Reinforcement Learning
- Robotic Motion Control
BSc in Computer Science and Physics, 2024
University of British Columbia
Experience
- Developed C firmware for communication over the vehicle’s controller area network, enabling full archival of crash data.
- Independently discovered and patched allocation inefficiency in Rust simulation codebase, improving runtimes by 30%.
- Optimized Rust data intake pipeline by hand-writing a parser, resulting in an 80% performance improvement.
- Wrote Rust software-in-the-loop (SIL) models and integration tests for inter-chip SPI communication and snooping.
- Ported internal hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing library to Linux and enabled firmware engineers to remotely execute tests using Python, C, Docker, and Jenkins.
- Designed and wrote SPI drivers to control the restraint control module’s (RCM) inertial measurement units (IMUs) in C.
- Implemented numerical integral approximations for the RCM crash algorithm’s near-deploy calculations in C.
- Created chip-level software-in-the-loop (SIL) models for the RCM’s onboard IMUs with extensive fault-injection capabilities in Rust and PyO3 and wrote SIL tests for drivers and crash algorithm using PyTest.
- Reduced hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test execution time from 5.5 hours to 2 minutes and enabled the addition of the HIL test suite to continuous integration (CI) by automating test running using Python and C.
- Created novel discretization technique for solving ill-conditioned instances of the Helmholtz equation in MATLAB.
- Developed high-performance finite-element magnetohydrodynamic simulation software using C++ and Eigen.
- Optimized the performance of simulations with millions of degrees of freedom using knowledge of vector calculus.
- Architected and created drivers and a multithreaded Python application for the display and keypad on Kepler’s next-generation modems.
- Singlehandedly developed new remote software image deployment system capable of supporting the growing number of models in Kepler’s constellation of 19 satellites using Python and SQL.
- Maintains Racket autograder server used by over 800 students to submit and receive feedback on over 1500 files daily.
- Improves students’ engagement by providing personalized feedback using applications developed in Python and Bash.
- Detected over 200 cases of academic misconduct by designing, implementing, and deploying novel code-similarity algorithm using Rust, Python, and TensorFlow.
- Supervises three other teaching assistants who contribute to the course infrastructure and teaching materials.
