Resume
> education, experience & the rest
Champaign, IL · adaorambanefo@gmail.com
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Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
May 2028
B.S., Majors in Statistics, Linguistics, and Actuarial Science · Minor in Computer Science
National Center for Supercomputing Applications Letter of Recognition (May 2026).
Relevant coursework: Probability, Mathematical Statistics, Statistical Modelling, Applied Machine Learning, Statistical Learning, Linear Algebra, Data Structures, Computer Systems.
Phillips Academy Andover
Andover, MA
Preparatory boarding school
Sept 2021 — May 2024
Winfield M. Sides Prize for Excellence in Computer Science (May 2023).
Activities: Blue Key Head · Co-Head of Fusion (African-Caribbean Dance Group) · Co-president of the Black Student Union · Co-founder of the African Student Association · ASL Club Co-Head.
Experience
CS 340: Introduction to Computer Systems, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
Course Assistant
Fall 2026
- Support undergraduates in a systems course covering computer architecture, memory management, concurrency, and networking.
- Hold office hours, grade coursework, and help students work through systems-level debugging in C.
ChatterLab, University of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Junior Researcher
Jun 2026 — Present
- Detect children's entry into multiparty conversation in naturalistic home recordings, using drops in linguistic alignment to mark interaction boundaries.
- Build and run semantic alignment pipelines in ALIGN 2.0 on caregiver-child speech in Python, supported by measures such as BERTScore and the Entropy-conVergence Metric.
- Develop an ELAN-to-ALIGN preprocessing converter that interleaves speaker tiers by time and preserves sung and wordless child vocalisations, moving the analysis from sample data onto real daylong audio.
- Present research on identifying multiparty conversation through temporal and alignment-based measures at the ICIS Founding Generation Symposium, September 2026.
Learning and Language Lab, University of Illinois
Champaign, IL
Research Assistant
Aug 2025 — May 2026
- Develop a transformer-based model combining visual, linguistic, and BERT-derived features to predict eye-movement patterns.
- Expand and curate an eye-tracking corpus from 225k to 800k+ word fixations across skilled readers.
- Engineer Python pipelines to extract, quantify, and visualise naturalistic caregiver-child interactions for publication.
Inhance Supply Chain Solutions
Johannesburg, South Africa
Data Science Intern
Jun 2025 — Aug 2025
- Built an automated Python forecasting pipeline using Darts and StatsForecast for time-series preprocessing and modelling.
- Integrated the forecasting system with AWS Redshift and Lambda for real-time execution, deploying to 400+ warehouses.
Adanian Labs, AI Center of Excellence
Nairobi, Kenya
AI Engineering Intern
Jul 2024 — Oct 2024
- Co-designed Mwalimu AI, an AI-powered CBC curriculum planner for Kenyan educators, in Python.
- Fine-tuned the Agricare chatbot backend services, increasing response accuracy by 20%.
Leadership & Volunteering
Littafin Fasaha
Remote
Software Engineer
Mar 2026 — Present
- Fine-tune large language models to deliver interactive computer science instruction in Hausa and other underrepresented African languages.
- Develop frontend components that integrate model outputs with the user-facing interface, walking students through coding exercises interactively.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
Orientation Leader
May 2026 — Present
- Welcomed incoming students and their families to campus, leading group sessions on academic planning, university expectations, and student life.
- Served as a first point of contact for questions about registration, coursework, and adjusting to college.
NCSA Research Conference Committee
Champaign, IL
Industry Networking Lead
Oct 2025 — Present
- Coordinated with the NCSA Industry Program and university partners to identify and invite industry participants.
- Developed panel questions to align with the 2026 conference theme.
- Moderated and led industry panel discussions, facilitating structured and professional dialogue.
HM Pitje Foundation
Johannesburg, South Africa
Project Manager · Advisory Board · Volunteer
Jul 2022 — Present
- Organised book drives raising $3,000+ and supporting digital skills training for 500+ youth in Soshanguve.
Skills
- Programming: Python, R, C++, C, Java, Swift, Dart
- ML / NLP: PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, spaCy, NLTK, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn
- Web / Data: React, Next.js, SQL, Supabase
- Tools: Git, Flutter, Excel
- Languages: English (fluent), French (fluent), Sesotho (fluent), Mandarin (intermediate)
Last updated: July 2026.