Jay Yu
Computer Science @ Purdue University
Aspiring computer science student with experience in robotics, programming education, and building real-world projects in Python, Java, and Kotlin. Passionate about creating technology that benefits society, with hands-on experience as a robotics team leader and project developer
Experience
Computer Science & Minor in Biological Sciences
Undergraduate @ Purdue University, West Lafayette
- Relevant Coursework: Programming in C, Object-Oriented Programming in Java, Programming in Python, Structured Programming in C++
School Chapter President
National Honor Society; California Crosspoint High School
- Collaborated with non-profit organizations such as the Pacific Beach Coalition to coordinate community clean-up events across the city of Hayward
- Led a student council team of three seniors to organize school-wide leadership events, including a speech by the Mayor of Hayward, raising awareness of societal issues and developing students’ leadership skills
Software Lead and Team Captain
FIRST Robotcs; California Crosspoint High School
- Documented programming concepts (encapsulation, abstraction, polymorphism) and Kotlin fundamentals for new team members
- Designed robotics and software lesson plans for a 3-month training, equivalent to a first-semester university course
- Coordinated workflow with ~6 programmers using Git and task management to align with the mechanical subteam
- Designed vision-based robot localization running at 50Hz with a noise-reducing filter for AprilTag detection
- Programmed robot autonomous sequences and path planning with 85% accuracy, winning the East Bay Regional against 52 teams
Math/Mandarin/Programming Teaching Assistant
The Salvation Army; Oakland, California
- Assisted teacher by explaining Mandarin, Math, and Python concepts to ~8 students of various ages
- Organized and shared lesson plans with 6 teachers and teaching assistants
- Liaised between the organization director and ~50 student families regarding school events and classwork
Projects
Employee Management System
Employee Management System built with a RESTful API using Spring Boot, JPA/Hibernate, and a PostgreSQL database to manage employee entities containing first name, last name, and email. Supports creating, reading, updating, and deleting (CRUD) employee records, as well as searching employees.
Challenge
Managing employee records manually or in spreadsheets is error-prone, lacks consistency, and does not scale well for organizations. Additionally, integrating persistence with relational databases while maintaining clean architecture can be difficult for backend applications.
Solution
The Employee Management System provides a RESTful API built with Spring Boot and PostgreSQL, containerized with Docker. It implements a clean layered architecture (Controller → Service → Repository), uses DTOs for separation of concerns, and leverages JPA/Hibernate for database persistence. This ensures structured, reliable, and scalable management of employee data.
Impact
- Improves data accuracy and consistency across employee records
- Reduces manual overhead by automating CRUD operations
- Demonstrates modern backend development practices with Dockerized PostgreSQL
- Provides a scalable foundation that can be extended with authentication, search, and cloud deployment
Find A Study Buddy
in development
Challenge
Solution
Impact
Barcode-scanning Attendance Tracker
A lightweight Python program built using OpenCV, pandas, and openpyxl to decode student ID barcodes and record attendance details in Excel.
Challenge
Our high school’s robotics team had about 35–40 members, and checking them in with the traditional sign-up sheet was too slow, cutting into regular meeting times. A faster method of recording attendance was needed.
Solution
A program was written to automatically decode student IDs when a student shows their ID to the camera or enters their student number into the system. The program then automatically formats the date, time, and meeting in Excel, generating weekly and seasonal total hours for each member.
Impact
- Used by a 40-member robotics club to streamline attendance tracking and accurately determine active member
- Increased meeting productivity and overall time management through decreasing amount of time required for members to check-in
Real-time American Sign Language (ASL) Alphabet Translator
A camera-based ASL alphabet translator that uses a camera to read input and decode hand signs, built with TensorFlow, MediaPipe, and a custom pipeline trained on Google’s Teachable Machine with 5,500+ self-created features and labels
Challenge
As technology advances, many people with speech difficulties still face challenges in communicating effectively. There is a need for tools that not only help others understand them but also allow individuals to express themselves through hand signs.
Solution
The program detects ASL alphabets, translates them into English letters, and audibly informs the user of what they’ve signed. Words and sentences can then be spoken aloud using Python’s text-to-speech library, with support for additional hand signs.
Impact
- Not yet utilized