RiyajChaulagain

Experience

An internship, two teaching roles, and a year of research.

1. May to Aug 2026

   Software Developer Intern

   AWC Inc., Baton Rouge, LA

   AWC’s sales team had a dashboard full of pipeline data but no quick way to ask it questions. I built a natural-language query chatbot so anyone can type “what did we ship to this customer last quarter?” and get a real answer about sales, customers, revenue, profit, bookings, and shipping dates.

   You ask“Top 5 customers by profit this year?”

   OpenAIparses the request, picks tools

   Python MCP server36 custom tools

   C# ASP.NET REST APIstructured, validated queries

   PostgreSQLsynced nightly by a C# ETL job

   I also wrote the C# ETL pipeline that syncs dashboard data into PostgreSQL every night, and set up Azure DevOps CI/CD so builds, tests, and deployments run without anyone touching them.

   • C#
   • ASP.NET Core
   • Python
   • MCP
   • OpenAI API
   • PostgreSQL
   • ETL
   • Azure DevOps
2. Aug 2026 to now

   Senior Mathematics Tutor

   Southeastern Louisiana University

   I tutor Algebra, Calculus, and Statistics, and work alongside faculty as an embedded tutor, leading exam reviews and one-on-one sessions.

3. Jun 2025 to now

   Teaching Assistant

   Southeastern Louisiana University

   I mentor 30+ high school teachers who are learning to teach programming, covering Java, Python, object-oriented design, data structures, and debugging through labs, office hours, and one-on-one help. I’ve written 50+ learning resources and run labs on algorithms, React Native, Node.js, MongoDB, Git, code review, and testing.

   • Java
   • Python
   • Data structures
   • React Native
   • Node.js
   • MongoDB
   • Git
4. Nov 2024 to Aug 2025

   Undergraduate Research Assistant

   Southeastern Louisiana University

   I built an LLM benchmarking platform that runs the same prompts against OpenAI, Gemini, and Claude and compares the results side by side, which cut more than five hours of manual evaluation each week. I also built a secure e-library with session-based authentication, role-based access, and real-time content management.

   • React
   • Firebase
   • REST APIs
   • LLM evaluation
   • Auth and RBAC

Selected work

Four projects with photos from the build. Click any image to enlarge it.

Jan to May 2026, Computer Architecture (CMPS 3750), team of three

AI Smart Stick

What if a walking stick could see?

A Raspberry Pi 4 running YOLOv8 looks ahead and tells a visually impaired user what’s there through Bluetooth earbuds: “Person, 3 meters ahead.” “Chair on your right.” An ultrasonic sensor catches what the camera misses and the handle vibrates harder the closer you get.

I designed the enclosure from scratch in Fusion 360 and printed it as three modular sections that clip onto a standard stick. It took four prototypes to get the fit right. I also worked on the caregiver dashboard: a live detection feed, danger alerts, GPS on a Leaflet map, and detection analytics, streamed with Server-Sent Events from a Node.js and Express backend, with Flask and SQLite on the Pi.

Detection

80+ object classes, 1 to 2 per second

Haptics

Single pulse under 2 m, double under 1 m, continuous under 50 cm

Hardware cost

Under $200, battery powered

• Raspberry Pi 4
• YOLOv8
• Python
• Flask
• SQLite
• Node.js
• Express
• Leaflet
• Fusion 360
• 3D printing

View on GitHub

LionHacks 2026, built in 6 hours, team of three

Brixel

A whiteboard, readable without sight, in under three seconds.

Around 19 million visually impaired children can’t see what their teacher writes on the board, and a human aide can cost $25,000 or more a year. Brixel sits on the desk and does the work passively: a Jetson Nano with a webcam captures the board, Google Cloud Vision extracts the text, and Supabase pushes it to a React dashboard that reads it aloud and converts it to Grade 2 Braille.

We shipped the full pipeline at SELU’s first hackathon: hardware with an ultrasonic sensor and haptic feedback, OCR from camera to cloud, a real-time dashboard, browser text-to-speech, Braille Unicode, and printable BRF files for Braille embossers.

Latency

Board to speech and Braille in under 3 seconds

Student effort

None. It runs on its own

Hardware cost

Under $200

• Jetson Nano
• Python
• OpenCV
• Google Cloud Vision
• Supabase
• React
• TypeScript
• Web Speech API

View on GitHub

Jan to May 2025, Software Engineering (CMPS 285), team of four

ACTIV-ATE

One place to log meals, workouts, and weight, and see the trend.

A full-stack fitness tracker with a C# ASP.NET Core API in an MVC structure and a React and TypeScript frontend styled with Mantine. Users log meals and exercises from a quick-log library, set weight goals, track macros, follow meal plans, check BMI, and get weekly reports and achievements when they hit a goal.

Authentication and CRUD run through REST endpoints backed by Entity Framework Core. We presented it to a guest panel at the end of the semester.

• C#
• ASP.NET Core
• Entity Framework Core
• SQL
• React
• TypeScript
• Mantine
• REST APIs

View on GitHub

Jul to Aug 2025, Uunchai (उँचाई) program, technical mentor

Agri-Tech

Field sensors, a phone app, and an AI that explains what the readings mean.

Over six weeks I mentored a student team from idea to working product: an IoT device that monitors temperature, pH, humidity, and soil moisture and scores the risk of farmland fires, a React Native app that alerts farmers in real time, and a Flask backend on Render that syncs the device to the app.

The app includes an LLM chat endpoint for plain-language advice about field conditions, Dockerized services with structured logging and error handling, and an enclosure modeled in Fusion 360, which I also taught the team to use.

• React Native
• Flask
• Docker
• Render
• IoT sensors
• LLMs
• Fusion 360

View on GitHub

More projects

Internship work, side projects, and things I’m building now.

Competitions and community

Where I compete, organize, and give back.

Nov 2025, Illinois

11th of 100 teams at the DOE CyberForce Competition

I competed with Southeastern’s team, the Bruteforce Lions, in the U.S. Department of Energy’s national cyber defense competition, defending realistic infrastructure against live attacks. We finished 11th out of 100 undergraduate and graduate teams, the highest ranking in our program’s history.

Oct 2026, organizer

Linux Ricing Competition

As Treasurer of the Association of Applied Cybersecurity, I helped our executive board plan and run a Halloween-themed Linux customization contest. Students rebuilt their desktops from the ground up, and faculty judged design, features, and configuration.

Oct 2025, New Orleans

Tulane Fall 2025 Cyber Challenge

Represented Southeastern’s Department of Computer Science at Tulane University’s cyber challenge, working through hands-on security problems as a team.

Spring 2026, Hammond

LionHacks 2026

Built and demoed Brixel in six hours at Southeastern’s first hackathon, organized by GDG Southeastern and the Northshore STEM Center with support from Google and Major League Hacking.

Summer 2025, remote

Mentor, Uunchai (उँचाई)

Guided a team of seven students for six weeks from idea to a working IoT and mobile product, teaching React Native, Flask, deployment, and 3D modeling in Fusion 360.

Washington, D.C.

Up to Us Leadership Bootcamp

Selected for a leadership program on fiscal policy, leadership, and advocacy, with sessions and discussions alongside student changemakers from across the country.

Skills

Tools I’ve shipped real projects with.

Education