PhD student at UC Berkeley
I build machine learning systems for speech, sustainability, and resource-constrained computing. My work mixes research, product engineering, and a stubborn fondness for tools that help real communities.
I am a CS PhD student at UC Berkeley, advised by Professor Gopala Anumanchipalli, after a joint BS/MS in CS and Math at UW.
Robust phonetic transcription and pronunciation learning for non-native, accented, and impaired speech.
Hardware-in-the-loop benchmarks, tiny models, and multimodal agents for environmental impact.
Field-facing systems for farmers, students, musicians, and educators.
Research papers, startups, talks, and tools aimed at practical computing for language, sustainability, education, and access.
I founded Koel Labs to make pronunciation feedback and speech technology more inclusive. We build open speech models, evaluation tools, and products for non-native and impaired speech, supported by Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia.
A commercial version of an attendance system I made for the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras. I co-founded this company with Claire Li. Quickly take attendance using QR codes. Features OAuth2 integration, electronic payments and a powerful admin UI.
Co-founded a tutoring company with Claire Li. I've taught 20+ students in K-12 topics and music/violin. I also fascillitate peer-reviewed research opportunities for high schoolers.
First-author Interspeech work on robust phonetic transcription for accented and non-native speech. We study how human and grapheme-to-phoneme supervision scale, and ship practical models through Koel Labs.
Pre-print on enduring performance gaps in ASR systems between standard and minority English varieties, with collaborators across CMU, UBC, and international speech research groups.
Co-first-authored CHI paper on designing and scaling a dual-platform agricultural technology for 10,000 farmers in rural Tanzania.
Co-first-authored Nature Electronics work on multimodal AI agents for sustainability assessment of consumer electronics.
Co-first-authored benchmark and harness for iterative optimization via hardware feedback in embedded machine learning deployments.
Worked with my friend, Austin Ulrigg, to design a novel graph embedding algorithm optimized for cage graphs. The problem lies at the intersection of graph theory, combinatorics, and topology and has applications in network design, chemistry, infrastructure planning, and more.
A visually rich exposition to topological graph theory, graph embedding, and rotation systems culminating in a deeper understanding of the novel Practical Algorithm for Graph Embedding (PAGE) that I co-invented.
It is ever more important for us to understand the environmental impact of the products we buy. Yet the traditional Life Cycle Assessment requires extensive domain expertise, data access, and time. This browser-based prototype uses in-context natural language and visuals to democratize understanding of environmental impact.
We presented our progress developing an MVP for pronunciation learning at Mozilla Builders '24 Demo Day following 12 weeks of intense user validation, machine learning, and HCI research.
Invited DUB Research Day talk on in-context interactive environmental impact communication.
Paul G. Allen School Annual Research Showcase talk and poster presentation on multimodal sustainability assessment.
Guest talk for the University of Washington embedded systems capstone on computer vision deployment for small devices.
Informal 10 minute talk on deploying speech technology at scale including techniques to optimize compute performance for streaming inference and practical concerns such as annotator bias.
University of Washington Research Symposium presentation on accessible, privacy-preserving concussion care.
Northwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium talk on graph embedding algorithms and optimization.
Presented our speech research and state of the art non-native speech phonemic transcription model at the Natural Language Processing poster session.
DubHacks Next Demo Day presentation on inclusive speech technology and Koel Labs.
Presented about the challenges of evaluating and building inclusive speech technology based on research with Samir Farhan (British Columbia) and Eunjung Yeo (Carnegie Mellon).
Presented a non-technical hands-on introduction to graph embedding at the Undergraduate Research Symposium with my co-author Austin Ulrigg.
Presented our work on Koel Labs at the DubHacks Next Demo Day. We did a poster presentation and were invited to do both a Headline Talk and a pitch to Madrona Venture Group.
Invited by Professor Bender to give a 50-minute lecture on applications of computational linguistics for pronunciation learning to the PhD students at the Tree House seminar.
Introduction to my company, Koel Labs, and our plans for pronunciation learning. Presented to the other 13 cohort teams at the Mozilla Builders Accelerator Kickoff Event in New York.
10 minute in person talk at Para.chi.dub about designing and scaling dual platform information dissemination systems in rural Tanzania based on my work on the eKichabi v2 project.
Professor Anderson invited me to give this 50 minute lecture at the CHANGE Seminar for 40 PhDs based on my research in the ICT4D space as part of the eKichabi v2 project.
As Tech Lead, I led development of customized assessment software to enhance Cascade Enrichment's K-12 tutoring curriculum in collaboration with Claire Li.
Data processing tools for the University of Washington's Design Build Fly team. Helped our team win 3rd place in the 28th national DBF competition.
My old youth orchestra (SYSO) needed a way to automate taking attendance so I made a system that allows musicians to scan their QR code at a scanning station (any authorized smartphone).
One of the challenges we faced in Science Olympiad was standardizing the way teams test the WiFi antennas they build. So I created a program with a nice GUI to make this easy.
This chrome extension enhances toebes.com to allow autogeneration of Cryptographical Puzzles (Code Busters tests for Science Olympiad to help my teammates practice).
NPM package to automatically manage SQLite database schema changes through a Django-like migration system but framework agnostic and with JavaScript+CLI integration. The library solves the issue of updating a production database schema without losing data or having to manually write/execute SQL queries. Used in production by attendqr.com.
Made as an intern at Gooey.AI, this quickly became their top 3 tool with 30K+ uses within the first two weeks and has landed branding deals and social media exposure for the company.
Simple, advertisement free, 100% local, and privacy friendly tierlist maker.
A classic web-based Tetris game with no ads. Can be downloaded and used offline.
A word game inspired by the popular Wordle but with ocean themed background graphics. Coded in collaboration with Claire Li. I coded a similar game on my own where you have to guess the state/country of the absurd law, or in a different mode select the AI generated law.
3D rendering engine written completely from scratch (down to the drawing of individual pixels) using only the CPU (so no help from the graphics card). This project taught me a lot about the math behind projection matrices, lighting and shadows, 3D transformations, texture mapping, and optimizing algorithms (parallel triangle drawing routines, frustrum culling, etc.).
This Science Olympiad challenge involved building and programming a sensor and its circuitry from scratch (using only basic circuit components and DIP) to measure salt concentration in water samples. I used a Raspberry Pi microcontroller to communicate via the I2C protocol to a NAU7802 ADC chip reading a voltage divider circuit. With proper callibration, probe submersion, and luck it is capable of less than 1% measurement error.
Reach me via alex@sandergi.com or scan the QR code to add me to your contacts.
