Rob Hand

Rob Hand

Software Engineer · UIUC Computer Science

Fourth-year CS student at UIUC focused on machine learning, AI, and full-stack development. My most recent work is open on GitHub; please reach out if you'd like to talk about opportunities or anything tech!

GitHub Activity

Career

Experience

  1. Capital One logo

    2026 – 2026

    Machine Learning Engineer Intern

    Capital One

    >Machine Learning for Knowledge Graph Optimization - Summer 2026

  2. Synchrony logo

    2025 – 2026

    Software Engineer Intern

    Synchrony Financial

    >Full Stack Dev with Vite and Java Spring Boot - Summer 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026

  3. University of Illinois Block I

    2025 – 2025

    Undergraduate NLP Researcher

    Forward Data Lab · UIUC

    >RAG methodology research under Prof. Kevin Chang. Contributed to an academic paper discovery tool.

  4. UIUC Course Assistant logo

    2024 – 2026

    Course Assistant

    Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · UIUC

    >Data Structures and OOP in C++

  5. UIUC Disruption Lab logo

    2024 – 2025

    Full-Stack Engineer

    UIUC Disruption Lab

    >Worked on full-stack apps and ML tools for clients including DSRS and PowerBox Technologies.

  6. University of Illinois Block I

    2023

    B.S. Computer Science

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Portfolio

Projects

MusicElo

MusicElo

Head-to-head music voting game

Full-stack music voting app where users battle songs bracket-style. Built with React, Next.js, FastAPI, and Supabase.

ReactNext.jsFastAPISupabase
Campus Amenities Tracker

Campus Amenities Tracker

Rank your favorite water fountains, vending machines, and bathrooms at UIUC

Full-stack CRUD app for tracking and rating campus amenities. Built with React, Next.js, FastAPI, and Supabase.

ReactSQLFastAPISupabase
Synchrony Shield

Synchrony Shield

Privacy guard for ChatGPT

Runner-up in a company-wide hackathon. Chrome extension that detects and blocks data leaks in GPT prompts in real time.

Chrome ExtensionReactPrivacy
AltCredit

AltCredit

Loan eligibility for the unbanked

Tool for banks to assess loan eligibility for undocumented individuals using alternative credit signals. HackIllinois 2025 Capital One track.

ReactPythonFintech
BioLitRecs

BioLitRecs

Similarity and text retriaval tool for cancer research litterature

Built a naive bayes classifier to classify cancer research papers and a content-based recommender system to find related papers for cancer researchers.

Natural Language ProcessingMachine LearningPythonText Retrieval
DSRI Workflow Tool

DSRI Workflow Tool

Graph visualization for research workflows

Interactive graph viz tool for Data Science Research Institute workflows using Neo4j and a React/Vue.js frontend.

ReactVue.jsNeo4j
MCQ Solver

MCQ Solver

AI-powered Chrome extension

Hidden extension that uses OpenAI's API to solve multiple-choice questions from highlighted text or screenshots.

Chrome ExtensionOpenAI API
QuickThoughts

QuickThoughts

Micro-blogging social platform

Social networking platform built on the MERN stack for sharing quick thoughts and connecting with others.

MongoDBExpressReactNode.js
Voltage Meter ML Model

Voltage Meter ML Model

Power usage forecasting for Latin America

ML model built with Meta's Prophet for a startup tracking electricity consumption trends across Latin American markets.

PythonProphetGoogle CloudPandas
Mosaic Maker

Mosaic Maker

KD-Tree photo mosaic generator

C++ program that generates a photo mosaic from a collection of smaller images using a KD-Tree for blazing-fast nearest-neighbor search.

C++Data StructuresAlgorithms
Chess Rating Predictions

Chess Rating Predictions

ML regression on game history

Regression model predicting chess ratings from game history and player statistics using scikit-learn.

Pythonscikit-learnMatplotlib