Hello! I'm Deniz 👋
🙋‍♂️

Hello! I'm Deniz 👋

Artificial Intelligence major, entrepreneur, popcorn fanatic

I love to work on projects that use AI to empower human creativity, productivity, and expression
  • Studying AI at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science (2024)
  • Currently looking for 2024 New Grad SWE/ML roles and building shopmystyle.ai to personalize online shopping 🛍️
  • Previously introduced students to the passion of programming as a head TA 👨‍🏫; built automated ML pipelines at Mercedes Formula 1 Team 🏎️
  • Always finding an amazing community of doers as a Neo Scholar Finalist and Innovation Scholar at Swartz Center

Work Experience

🧠
Researcher | Multimodal ML Lab (MultiComp)
⏱️
Summer 2023
  • Enhancing AI models that generate body gestures from a speech by coming up with ways to integrate mental state influences as context
  • Creating a new dataset with video, speech, and pose landmarks for the task from 250 hours’ worth of content
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SWE Intern (Race Strategy) | Mercedes F1 Team
⏱️
Summer 2022
  • Designed models to detect electric deployment (MGU-K) of F1 cars, achieving a four-fold performance increase
  • Architected and deployed an AutoML pipeline to grant 1000+ non-AI engineers the ability to extract insights from 70,000 data channels
👨‍🏫
Head TA | 15-112 Fundamentals of Programming
⏱️
5 Semesters 2021-23
  • Envisioned an experimental version of the course based on active learning, tripled student size & set a new teaching standard in three semesters
  • Directed a team of 16 TAs, taught lectures, and created recitation plans and practice problems to elevate the academic experience for 1000+ students over five semesters

Projects

🛍️ ShopMyStyle.ai (co-founder)

Developing AI-based tools to help customers search for more personalized products, faster.

Links: website | YC W23 Pitch

(AI Infra, PyTorch, Full Stack)

🫐 Blueberry AI (CalHacks’23)

AI secretary that makes phone calls and resolves issues on your behalf, saving hours lost waiting in queue for customer service.

(OpenAI, LlamaIndex, Web Dev)

💻 Kahoot112

Merged Kahoot’s thrill of competition and Leetcode’s challenge, crafting a competitive programming game.

Links: video demo (see babyface Deniz)

(Python)

🥬 Autonomous Greenhouse

Grew enough lettuce and radishes for a salad (an actually tasty one)! Our greenhouse relied on a layered autonomy model for planning and CV/ML for state estimation.

(Robotics, CV, Autonomy)

🧠 Rewriting Meta’s ImageBind Model to be JSON-Serializable

Revised Meta's ImageBind model for online hosting, enabling it to accept JSON-serializable inputs for remote access.

(AI Infra, PyTorch, Baseten)

⛓️ Blockchain for Supply Chain

Was a member of Palo Alto Research Center's (PARC) Blockchain group. Researched how blockchain technology could be used to improve supply chains.

🍭 Ludens Store (co-founder)

An e-commerce company we built in high school. Sold personalized gift boxes filled with sweets. It was small but gave us a taste of how marketing, website design, and customer service worked.

Initiatives that matter.

🇹🇷 Board Member, Turkish Student Society (Carnegie Mellon)

(Earthquake Relief) Raised $125K to help victims and build container houses after the aftermath of the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake (press coverage).

(Election Participation) Organized busses to Washington DC to make sure Turkish nationals living in Pittsburgh could cast a vote in the 2023 Turkish Presidential elections.

📚 Volunteer, Young Guru Academy (YGA)

YGA is a non-profit in Turkey working on the SDGs. I was selected among 50,000 annual applicants with 50 other students to participate in YGA's Social Innovation Leadership Program.

(Education Equality) Traveled to orphanages in several underdeveloped cities to play with the kids, incite interest in STEM, and deliver science robotics kits free of charge to improve classroom resources.

(Accessibility) Designed technologies to assist individuals with visual impairment, which evolved into Turkcell’s Dream Companion application with 200k+ active users.

Links & Contacts

Looking for an SWE or AI engineer? Looking for some product advice? Want to know my favorite color?

I'm always happy to chat. Connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message ;)

You made it all the way here? Well, here are some fun facts and happy memories.

  • Love to travel, been to 16 countries (and counting)
  • I wholeheartedly believe Turkish coffee is the best coffee. If you haven’t tried, go to your local Turkish barista (if that even exists)
  • I’m the type of person that sings the lyrics incorrectly 85% of the time. Effort counts, right?
  • When there’s a lot on my mind, I try to go on a run or meditate (sometimes both)
I’m a massive F1 fan, actually met Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton. Yes, they are as amazing as they seem on tv
I’m a massive F1 fan, actually met Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton. Yes, they are as amazing as they seem on tv