Jake Richard

Jake Richard is a senior at the University of Florida, currently completing a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics. He will graduate in May 2024 and hopes to find a role in software engineering thereafter. He is a member of several on-campus organizations, including the Association of Computer Engineers where he currently holds a position as Project Manager. In this position, he is responsible for organizing and leading a development team through a semester-long project of the club’s choosing. Through coursework and club involvement, he has gleaned a passion and a knack for developing full-stack web applications. Starting as mostly a frontend developer, he has since migrated his focus to backend development. He is particularly excited about data-intensive software, especially if it requires system-level knowledge and optimization. 

Jake’s past two summers have been spent gaining industry experience through two relevant internships. Most recently, he interned at JP Morgan Chase in Tampa, Florida as a software engineering intern. During this time, he worked with a product team to develop an internal tool for gauging the health and performance of invoice processing systems. This required the creation of a backend to receive and transform high volumes of transaction data from underlying databases before forwarding that data to a frontend via REST APIs. During this internship he also became acquainted with cloud computing practices, achieving the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. The previous summer, he interned abroad in Dublin, Ireland at a digital marketing startup as a data analysis intern. In this role, he exercised his penchant for mathematics to create and update systems responsible for analyzing the performance of clients’ advertising campaigns. 

Antonio Migotto

Antonio Migotto is currently in his fourth year at the University of Florida majoring in computer science, set to graduate in May 2024 from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. He has a passion for cybersecurity and community service projects. Antonio is a long-standing member of the University of Florida Student Infosec Team (UFSIT), a member of the red and blue teams. There, he competed in the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC), the Department of Energy’s CyberForce Competition, the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), and the competition for the NSA’s National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE) program. He looks forward to mentoring students this fall. 

In the past year, he interned at Florida Community Innovation Foundation (FCI), a non-profit focused on public service projects for Florida citizens, and he will continue his internship in the Fall. During his internship, he collaborated with other students on the Florida Community Resource Map, designed to help community members access healthcare, food and nutrition, housing, and education resources. His primary task was establishing the frontend interfaces for the frontpage, the individual resource pages, and the search results page. At FCI, he looks forward to working on a new project aimed at addressing the challenges faced by people with disabilities when looking for career opportunities. 

Antonio enjoys spending his free time being active outdoors, regularly taking part in and organizing trips for the Outdoor Adventure Recreation club. As of 2023, he has hiked 1,172 miles of the Appalachian Trail. 

Jania Fernan

Proceeding in the fourth year of her Computer Science Bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida with a minor in Mathematics and upon completion of her AI certificate, Jania Fernan is a dynamic and accomplished individual with a passion for technology and community engagement. In her projects, she extracted insights from data, employing techniques such as audio feature extraction and linguistic analysis using Python. She also assessed machine learning models for sentiment analysis and reduced dimensionality for facial image prediction. Her work extends to web development, where she served as a product manager and developer for a low-stake semester-long project, demonstrating her proficiency in web app development, git version control, and Agile framework.

Jania also excels in leadership and involvement. As Assistant Director of The Ace Company, she coordinates performances, choreographies, meetings, and social gatherings alongside her dance group. In the UF Society of Asian Scientists and Engineering, she participates in technical workshops and charitable events. Moreover, her role as culture chair in the UF Filipino Student Association involves organizing small to big-scale events to promote Filipino culture. She is a team player and has worked very well alongside her peers, as she establishes clear communication within her team to bring out the best in everyone while prioritizing efficiency and effectiveness.

Her commitment to education and mentorship is evident through her dedication to providing recommendations and resources to help other students academically and professionally. She further achieves academic excellence, earning recognition as a Dean’s lister.

Jania is a well-rounded individual passionate about helping others, mentorship, educational outreach, and participating in dance performances. In addition, her affinity for problem-solving, fast learning capabilities, avidity towards gaining exposure to new tools, and obtained leadership qualities from extracurriculars would be valuable for any software development company.

Douglas Ta

Douglas Ta is currently a 4th year student at the University of Florida studying his Computer Science B.S. in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. He is also studying to complete a minor in Business Administration. His graduation date will be May 2024. Douglas’ most recent professional experience working in the industry was his prolonged internship as a data scientist at Fire Neural Network. His 8 months working at FNN allowed him to gain key experience that provided him numerous insights such as building software applications to service consumers as well as how to go about putting and maintaining a machine learning model into production. Douglas has also been doing part-time work as a Concierge for ARC Tracker since June of 2022.  

Douglas has been involved with UF Badminton Club over the past 3 years. He had gained a position on the board as community service chair in his sophomore year, and was voted into presidency in his junior year. It will now be his 2nd year as president. Some of the responsibilities that came with being club president include managing a board of members on a daily basis, creating community service events that benefit his community, and organizing fundraising events to pay for club expenses. Some examples of these club events include helping volunteer at the Alachua Track and Field Meet as well as hosting intercollegiate badminton tournaments for universities across the South. These tournaments helped raise thousands of dollars to fund the core UF collegiate team to play at nationals. 

Douglas’ career aspiration is to become a full-stack machine learning engineer. Although a difficult path, he can push on with belief that the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.