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Greetings!

Cheyenne
Ward

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AI Engineer · Researcher · Mathematician

Cheyenne Ward
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0Dean's List
0In Scholarships

About Me

I am an AI Engineer and Applied Mathematics researcher building at the intersection of machine learning systems and theoretical foundations. My work spans LLM evaluation and alignment, ML pipeline development, and novel research in Topological Data Analysis and manifold learning.

I'm open to industry AI engineering roles (LLM evaluation, ML research engineering, applied AI) as well as PhD opportunities in TDA, geometric machine learning, or computational biology. Feel free to reach out!

California State University, San Bernardino

August 2021 — May 2026

B.S. Mathematics B.S. Computer Science
Minor: Applied Physics Minor: Data Science
🏅 Dean's List ×3 🏅 ExCELS Scholar — $10,000 🏅 Cal-Bridge Scholar — $15,000 📚 LSAMP Scholar

Research

Developing novel methods in topological data analysis, manifold learning, and machine learning across multiple research institutions.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Active
January 2023 — Present

I am working on a neural network for satellite imagery analysis.

University of California, Berkeley Active
September 2024 — Present

I am working on topological data analysis methods for directed graph structures.

Northeastern University Active
November 2024 — Present

I am working on new approaches to improving the theoretical foundations of neural networks.

University of California, San Diego Active
November 2022 — Present

Neural Linkage Learning for Agglomerative Tree Construction

I am working on a neural network approach to hierarchical clustering.

University of California, San Diego Active
November 2022 — Present

Low Distortion Local Random Fourier Features (LDLRF)

I am working on new approaches to manifold learning and dimensionality reduction.

University of California, San Diego Past
November 2022 — 2023

Predicting Reversals in Earth's Magnetic Axial Dipole

I simulated Earth's magnetic axial dipole using deterministic chaotic differential equations in MATLAB, then applied Support Vector Machines to identify potential magnetic reversal thresholds. Presented at the 2023 Meeting of the Minds Conference.

California State University, San Bernardino Past
March 2022 — August 2022

I used Electronic Health Records to develop a predictive model for Pediatric Sleep Apnea in Python and R. I also collaborated with medical doctors at the University of Ohio to build a statistical model evaluating the clinical effectiveness of a novel cardiac support device.

Presentations & Conference Proceedings

Aug 2025

Neural Linkage Learning for Agglomerative Tree Construction

UC San Diego — Summer Research Conference (SRC)

Oral
May 2025

Covariance and Network Analyses of High Dimensional RNA-Seq of cell-free mRNA for Alzheimer's Disease

Los Alamos SFAF

Oral & Poster Conference Proceedings
May 2023

Predicting Reversals in Earth's Magnetic Axial Dipole

Meeting of the Minds Conference

Oral & Poster

Work Experience

Applied machine learning and data science across pharmaceuticals, biotech, AI safety, and social impact.

Handshake

AI Engineer

Nov 2025 — Present

I develop codebases in Python and C++ to challenge LLM performance on engineering tasks, and investigate reasoning traces using chain-of-thought analysis to detect misalignment, data leakage, and unsafe model behavior. I deliver structured evaluation reports using model safety and alignment frameworks, contributing directly to iterative model development cycles. Day-to-day I maintain shared evaluation codebases on GitHub using feature branches and pull requests, and I've built reusable benchmarking utilities and annotation frameworks shared across multiple model assessment pipelines.

LLM EvaluationModel AlignmentAI SafetyPythonC++GitHub

Cultivate Food Rescue

Data Science Intern

Aug — Dec 2025

I developed a statistical model to quantify regional food insecurity using demographic and donation data spanning 20 counties and over 500,000 households. I also built an interactive mapping tool that helps users locate nearby food pantries and their operating hours, improving access to food distribution services for communities experiencing food insecurity.

Statistical ModelingGIS / MappingFood Security

SuperfluidDX

Data Science Intern

Aug 2024 — May 2025

I processed and analyzed large-scale cell-free mRNA biomarker datasets containing over 100,000 gene expression measurements as part of an Alzheimer's disease benchmarking study. I identified disease-associated gene interaction patterns using Spearman correlation, then applied PCA and logistic regression with K-fold cross-validation to model sex-based differences in transcriptomic networks across patient cohorts.

GenomicsPCALogistic RegressionAlzheimer's

Elanco

Data Science Intern

Aug 2023 — Jan 2024

I designed and built a knowledge graph integrating multi-modal biomedical datasets including drugs, targets, and diseases, consolidating over 200 Parquet files with more than two million rows using Python and DuckDB. I then applied Graph Attention Networks and Graph Convolutional Networks to model complex biological networks and surface patterns relevant to drug target identification across human and animal datasets.

Knowledge GraphsGAT / GCNDuckDBDrug Discovery

Merck

Software Engineer Intern

Aug 2022 — May 2023

I fine-tuned a BERT-based NLP model to extract biomedical entities and relationships from scientific literature, then built a full-stack application using React and AWS EC2 to make that data searchable by researchers. I also integrated the extracted data into a Neo4j knowledge graph with fuzzy search capabilities, enabling efficient exploration of complex biomedical relationships across drug, gene, and disease datasets.

BERT Fine-TuningNLPNeo4jAWS

Naval Surface Warfare Center

Software Engineer Intern

Jun — Aug 2021

I developed a Python pipeline to automatically identify AR44 naval systems at the package level and update their cybersecurity compliance status according to current standards. I also built an automated alert system that flagged outdated systems and sent email notifications to engineering teams, meaningfully reducing the time spent on compliance tracking. I maintained all pipeline code on GitHub with a clean commit history and documentation so any team member could reproduce or extend the system.

PythonCybersecurityAutomationGitHub

Skills

Programming

PythonTypeScriptC++SQLRMATLAB

Machine Learning

PyTorchTensorFlowScikit-learnBERT Fine-TuningGNN / GAT / GCNPCASVMK-Fold CV

LLM & AI Systems

LLM EvaluationChain-of-Thought AnalysisModel AlignmentSafety & Alignment FrameworksBenchmark DesignRLHF Feedback

Research Methods

Topological Data AnalysisManifold LearningRandom Fourier FeaturesKnowledge GraphsFeature Engineering

Data & Cloud

Pandas / NumPy / SciPyPostgreSQLMongoDBDuckDBAWSBigQueryDatabricks

Engineering & Tools

GitGitHubGitHub ActionsCI/CDCMakepybind11JupyterTableau

Personal Projects

Side projects exploring systems programming, AI agent frameworks, and scientific computing, all maintained on GitHub with CI pipelines.

physim

C++ May – Jul 2026

I built physim as a high-performance C++ N-body physics simulation engine. It supports Euler and RK4 time integration, gravitational, electrostatic, and spring forces, and elastic sphere collision detection, using OpenMP-parallelized force accumulation and an octree spatial broadphase for scalable performance. I also exposed the full simulation API to Python via pybind11 bindings, so researchers can drive and analyze simulations without touching the C++ layer. Includes a solar system orbital example and a charged particle simulation, built on CMake and maintained with GitHub Actions CI.

C++20CMakeOpenMPpybind11N-body SimulationScientific ComputingGitHub Actions

agentcore

TypeScript Mar – Apr 2026

I designed agentcore as a TypeScript framework for building AI agents that hold up in production. The core is composable: a ToolRegistry handles tool dispatch, MemoryManager keeps context windows coherent under overflow, and WorkflowEngine runs concurrent async tasks with configurable concurrency limits. On top of that sit a PluginManager for loading tool bundles at runtime and an Orchestrator for running multiple agents in parallel with fail-fast semantics. Ships as a single-entry-point library with OpenAI and Azure client wrappers, TypeScript type-checking in CI, and a Jest test suite on Node 20.

TypeScriptAI AgentsTool UseAgentic SystemsOpenAI APIJestGitHub Actions

biopipeline

Python Nov 2025 – Feb 2026

I built biopipeline as a pip-installable Python library for bioinformatics researchers who want a clean toolkit without a lot of setup. It handles FASTA, FASTQ, and GenBank file parsing, local pairwise sequence alignment via Smith-Waterman, and a composable pipeline system where processing steps can be chained or run in batch. A YAML-driven config and a CLI let researchers run common analyses without writing Python. Ships with comprehensive unit tests, and CI runs pytest across Python 3.10–3.12 via GitHub Actions.

PythonBioinformaticsSmith-WatermanReusable LibraryCLIpytestGitHub Actions

Honors & Awards

2025

Dean's List

3.8 GPA — 18 units

2025

ExCELS Scholar

$10,000 — Academic Achievement

2024

Cal-Bridge Scholar

$15,000 Scholarship

2024

Dean's List

3.8 GPA — 14 units

2023

Dean's List

4.0 GPA — 16 units

2023

Undergraduate Summer Research Grant

$5,000 — CSUSB

2023

LSAMP Scholar

$1,000 — Research Grant

2022

SCURR Research Grant

$1,000 — Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research

A Bit About Me

Ambidextrous

I'm ambidextrous

🎹

Piano & Guitar

I play piano and guitar

🌱

Gardening

I enjoy gardening

📐

Math Book Collector

I love collecting math books

Get in Touch

I'm open to industry AI engineering roles (LLM evaluation, ML research engineering, applied AI) and PhD opportunities in topological data analysis, geometric machine learning, or computational biology. I'm also happy to discuss research collaborations or any intersection of the two.