Projects

Things I've built

A small collection of personal and client work spanning game development, full-stack web, and data analytics. Each project taught me something I now use daily.

Robot Imitation Learning: ACT vs. SmolVLA

2026 · Research · Concordia College
Python PyTorch Hugging Face LeRobot CUDA W&B SO-101

A comparative study of two robot-learning approaches — the Action Chunking Transformer (ACT) and SmolVLA, a vision-language-action model — trained on identical demonstration data to benchmark a lightweight specialist against a pretrained generalist on a real-world manipulation task.

I built the full pipeline end-to-end on Hugging Face's LeRobot framework: assembled and calibrated a dual-arm SO-101 robot with leader–follower teleoperation, collected a 200-episode demonstration dataset (~71k frames, dual-camera + joint-state) via teleoperation, and published it to the Hugging Face Hub. I then trained ACT from scratch (100k steps), fine-tuned the 450M-parameter SmolVLA from its pretrained base, and deployed both policies for autonomous task execution on the physical arm.

What I built

  • Dual-arm SO-101 assembly & calibration
  • Leader–follower teleoperation rig
  • 200-episode dataset (~71k frames)
  • Published dataset on HF Hub
  • ACT trained from scratch (100k steps)
  • SmolVLA fine-tuned (450M params)
  • Autonomous policy deployment
  • Training profiling & DDP scaling analysis
What I learned Diagnosed and resolved a deep stack of Windows GPU-training issues to get LeRobot running on a dual-RTX-4000-Ada workstation — PyTorch / torchcodec / FFmpeg version alignment, a native pyarrow-vs-PyTorch DLL load-order segfault, Hugging Face cache symlink-permission failures, and Windows multiprocessing constraints. I then profiled training to identify compute vs. data bottlenecks, which informed a single- vs. multi-GPU (DDP) scaling decision.

Nixon Norman Media

2024 · Full-stack · Client work
HTML/CSS JavaScript PHP SQL
Nixon Norman Media homepage screenshot showing portfolio gallery and brand.

A production website I built for a local videography company. Designed and developed end-to-end with a portfolio gallery, service pages, testimonials, a PHP-backed contact form, and a small admin layer for managing content.

Features

  • Portfolio gallery
  • Services pages
  • Client testimonials
  • PHP-backed contact form
  • Responsive layout
  • MySQL persistence
What I learned My first end-to-end client project: requirements gathering, responsive layout discipline, server-side form handling, and what it means to ship and support real software for someone else.

BlockBuster

2024 · Java · Personal
Java Swing GUI Game dev
BlockBuster gameplay: a grid of colored blocks with a score display.

BlockBuster is a desktop arcade puzzle game built entirely in Java with the Swing GUI library, inspired by the mobile game BlockBlast. Players clear blocks by matching colors and chaining combos.

Features

  • Persistent high-score tracking
  • Dark mode toggle
  • Multiple color themes
  • Combo system for bonus points
  • Responsive Swing UI
  • Keyboard-driven controls
What I learned Reinforced my Swing fundamentals and taught me how to architect game state — separating model, view, and input handling so feature work didn't snowball into tangled code.

Blackjack

2024 · Java · First Java project
Java OOP Console app
Blackjack console game showing a player's hand against the dealer.

A console blackjack game written in Java where a single player faces an AI dealer under standard casino rules. Built in my first semester of college and improved across several iterations.

Features

  • Virtual money betting system
  • Split pairs functionality
  • Double-down option
  • Strategic AI dealer logic
  • Standard Blackjack rules
  • Hand evaluation engine
What I learned My first real exposure to object-oriented design — modeling cards, hands, decks, and players as distinct collaborators. The project cemented how OOP keeps complex game state manageable.