cs + linguistics @ uiuc

Aryanna Mong

I build things that turn noisy human signals — speech, EEG, language — into something a computer can actually use. Currently a middleware intern at Synchrony, lead dev on an EEG-driven VR project, and a CS + linguistics student.

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Experience

May 2026 — Present

Synchrony Financial

Software Engineer Intern · Middleware Team

  • Developed a decoupled Spring Boot microservice in an Agile environment to optimize asynchronous REST API routes
  • Validated API performance and endpoint security using Postman for integration testing across middleware boundaries
  • Architected data pipelines monitored via Splunk, leveraging automated exception handling to ensure data integrity
  • Built a vulnerability-filtering GitHub Copilot agent for the Hunters security team

Sept 2024 — Present

NeuroTech @ UIUC

Lead Developer · VR NeuroFeedback Project

  • Designing Bluetooth Low Energy sensors for low-latency communication between embedded sensors and the game
  • Building VR and Windows games in Unity that adapt dynamically to user responses using EEG data streams
  • Implementing WebSocket-based scripts to integrate real-time VR neurofeedback therapy into interactive games

Aug 2025 — May 2026

UIUC Gies College of Business

Research Intern

  • Engineered an automated pipeline using HuggingFace models to extract and structure data from 2,500+ unformatted text feeds
  • Researched methods to analyze the economic impact of advertising "USA made" products under Prof. Takeda & Feng

Feb 2025 — May 2026

UIUC Siebel School of Computing and Data Science

Undergraduate Researcher

  • Built a speech processing pipeline with OpenAI Whisper and PyAnnote for voice diarization and multi-stream transcription
  • Architected and implemented multiple client-facing applications using Python and PsychoPy

Aug 2025 — Jan 2026

Ascend UIUC Chapter

DEI Director

  • Directed the chapter's DEI strategy through targeted workshops and presentations for 150+ members
  • Collaborated with 2+ external groups to host large-scale events, increasing visibility and attendance by 80%
  • Managed multiple high-priority initiatives across 6 internal departments in a fast-paced setting

Projects

AxB Speech Perception Interface

A Python experimental interface with randomized stimulus presentation, deployed in a Phase 1 trial serving 200+ students and enabling large-scale speech perception research.

PythonPsychoPyPavloviaGitLab

Business Operations Monitor

Classified company stances on Russia post-2022 across 5,000+ news articles. Swapping brittle regex for DistilBERT semantic analysis pushed precision from 65% → 92%.

PythonPyTorchPandasRegexNLTKTensorFlow

FindMyIllini

A React navigation tool that helps UIUC students find resources and rooms inside Grainger Library — dynamic map, interactive buttons, and the specific relief of never getting lost on the 3rd floor again.

React.jsJavaScriptFigmaCSS

Skills

Languages

JavaPythonC++C#CJavaScriptHTMLCSSVerilog

Frameworks

React.jsNext.jsUnityAndroid Studio

AI / ML & Data

OpenAIHuggingFaceNLTKPandasNumPyPyTorchTensorFlow

Infra & DevOps

MongoDBDockerGitCI/CDPostmanMavenSpring Tool Suite

about

CS × Linguistics

I study computer science + linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Whether it's speech, EEG signals, or language data, they are all the same just written in different fonts: noisy human signal. My curiosity and passion for this has led me to build pipelines and interfaces to manage it. US citizen, eligible for security clearance.

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