Kevin McLeod
Software Engineer @ Harvard
Hi! I'm currently a senior at Harvard pursuing a double major in Computer Science and Physics. I'm passionate about all different kinds of software and engineering, from AI to web development to robotics to game development! In my free time, I love dancing, playing instruments, running, playing frisbee, travelling, trying new restaurants and more!
Experience
Microsoft
- Shipped a generative-AI image experience in Bing Images end-to-end (Bing: 1B+ monthly users), from design to review
- Developed text-to-text quality metrics for Bing image experiences and used them to improve multiple experiences by 7%+
- Prototyped intent-driven, curated GenAI image experiences and a new routing design that serves stacked user needs
Stealth AI Startup
- Architected the full stack from an empty repo to a working prototype: Next.js/React frontend, FastAPI backend, AI models
- Ran discovery interviews and surveys with 100+ prospective users and used the findings to narrow product scope
GP Enterprise Solutions
- Reduced database response times by 5% by restructuring filter logic and eliminating redundant queries
- Shipped bulk file export and dynamic form management features, incorporating feedback from user interviews
Kempner Institute, Harvard
- Estimated relative 3D object positions from single RGB frames using Mask R-CNN instance segmentation and MiDaS depth
- Built a PyTorch prototype composing per-object energy terms (ground contact, non-interpenetration, scene centering) into a differentiable scene-level objective minimized with Adam over 3D object positions
Harvard Datamatch
- Rebuilt the Datamatch frontend in Next.js on a 5-person team, serving 22,000+ students during the matching window
FIRST Robotics Team 1493
- Led electrical and programming subteams, building competition-ready robot control systems and reliable codebases
- Directed pit operations at high-stakes competitions, adaptively troubleshooting hardware/software issues under strict time constraints and pressure
- Placed 23rd at the 2022 FIRST Robotics World Championship (Houston, TX); organized STEM outreach programs and community initiatives
- Built an automated computer vision aiming system that aligned the shooter in real time, boosting scoring accuracy 90% and reducing the need for manual adjustments during matches
Projects
A few things I’ve shipped recently.
Personal Project
Built a link-first group scheduling app: an organizer shares a link in a group chat and attendees respond on mobile web with no account or download. Engineered a FastAPI/PostgreSQL/Redis + Celery backend with a request/proposal/response state machine, tokenized share links, and a background reminder pipeline, plus privacy-first Google Calendar OAuth for free/busy suggestions and idempotent event write-back. Frontend in Next.js 15 / React 19, covered by Playwright and axe accessibility tests.
Distributed Computing Project
Built a real-time collaborative editor in C++23 on a Multi-Paxos replicated log with leader election, log trimming, and request batching. Designed the editor state machine with splice-based edits, OT-style rebasing of stale edits, and dedup by client serial. Cut commit latency from ~370 ms to ~60 ms under 1% packet loss and raised throughput by 43%, with an HTTP/SSE gateway, binary protocol, and crash-recovery persistence tested across six failure scenarios.
Microsoft Intern Hackathon — 3rd place
Owned real-time hand-gesture controls (12 gestures: pinch-grab, two-hand scale, rotate, explode, snap views) from MediaPipe landmarks for a voice- and gesture-driven hologram, stabilized with hysteresis, debouncing, and EMA smoothing. Integrated gesture recognition into a Three.js / React Three Fiber hologram experience.
Robotics Project
Implemented a 2D Kalman filter (Joseph-form covariance update, speed-scaled process noise) for localization and built a multi-class log-odds occupancy grid (free/wall/flag/capture) from noisy simulated LIDAR raycasts. Explores unknown mazes autonomously with BFS frontier search, obstacle inflation with fallback replanning, and an arrive controller.
Machine Learning Project
Co-developed learned structured pruning masks for BERT during MMLU fine-tuning, with no fixed pruning budget. Introduced sparsity and binary-entropy quantization losses so masks converge to 0/1 and learn layer-wise compression, pruning >90% of FFN activations with a single-digit percentage-point accuracy drop vs. an unpruned fine-tuned baseline.
Robotics Project
Extended CPDOT (multi-robot object transportation with a deformable sheet) with independently weighted planning constraints, raising planning success from 60% to 65%. Evaluated formation, topology, and obstacle-safety priorities in 4-robot simulations to identify speed vs. success tradeoffs.
Personal Project
Created a Python/Pandas + Google APIs platform to compare 4,000+ colleges across hundreds of criteria. Enabled real-time filtering, multi-dimensional search, and automated updates through integrated APIs.
Systems Programming Class
Implemented virtual memory, per-process page tables, and fork/exit/page-allocation syscalls in an x86-64 kernel. Wrote a debugging malloc that catches double frees, invalid frees, out-of-bounds writes, and memory leaks, and developed a Unix shell (pipes, redirection, conditionals, background jobs) plus thread-safe I/O with byte-range locks.
Harvard Negotiation Club
Designed and launched the Harvard Undergraduate Negotiation Club’s website as a founding board member and web developer. Built with React and Next.js as a mobile-friendly platform with event announcements, member bios, and recruitment resources.
Research with Prof. Yilun Du, Kempner Institute
Estimated relative 3D object positions from single RGB frames using Mask R-CNN instance segmentation and MiDaS depth. Built a PyTorch prototype composing per-object energy terms (ground contact, non-interpenetration, scene centering) into a differentiable scene-level objective minimized with Adam over 3D object positions.
Campus matchmaking & event platform
Rebuilt the Datamatch frontend in Next.js on a 5-person team, serving 22,000+ students during the matching window.
Personal Group Project
Led a team of 10 building a 3D RPG in Unity, coordinating game design, audio, and UI work across disciplines. Engineered animation state machines, modular combat, and Ink-based branching dialogue on an event-driven architecture.
Personal Project/Hackathon
Developed a 2D game blending Space Invaders, Breakout, and Flappy Bird mechanics. Players shoot meteors to stay afloat via recoil, balancing survival and offense in a retro 2D style.
Competition Entry
Led a 3-person team to build an agent for Correlation One’s Tower Defense competition. Ranked 67th of 66,265 players and achieved a 60% win rate across 7,425 matches with adaptive offensive/defensive strategies.
Tech for Social Good Club Project
Built a React/Next.js + Supabase web app with fuzzy search, real-time updates, and adaptive UI. Designed responsive Tailwind interfaces to support mobile and low-latency use for biodiversity researchers.
Personal Project
Recreated the classic Chrome Dino game in Python with Pygame. Implemented obstacle spawning, collision detection, and increasing difficulty for an endless runner experience.