Hey! My name is AJ Federici and this is the fun part of my website where I intend to showcase different projects that I am working on.
But first, I want to take some time to talk a little bit about myself. I grew up in Dekalb, Illinois and lived there until I was about 15. At the end of my freshman year I was accepted into a residential highschool, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. I'm now a rising Junior at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana studying Computer Science. I enjoy things like going for a run, playing chess, basketball, videogames, or the piano in my free time. I love traveling and being outdoors but I also enjoy quiet days indoors watching some Rick and Morty. Computer science is my main passion - there are tons of sub-categories and uses for tools in cs that have caught my interest!
Computational Finance:
In highschool, I was fortunate enough to land an internship TransMarket Group, a proprietary trading firm based in Chicago for about 8 hours every week. I worked on many small projects in python ranging from database manipulation to data analytics. As far as personal projects go, I have a huge fan of cryptocurrency which meets at the roads of finance, crpytography, and computer science. While it is a recent fad, I have been interested and involved since 2016 (the boom where popularity skyrocketed was the end of 2017). So, I am working on a simple bot that will trade crpytocurrency based on analytics and algorithms.
Cryptography and cyber-security:
I have been interested in cryptography since the course I took in number theory and was amazed by its practicality, especially with the rise of cryptocurrency. I have been working on different encrpytion and decryption programs that I hope to host on this site. Recently, I have also gotten into cyber-security, for which my team ranked #1 in the Midwest and we went on to compete at NYU's national Highschool Forensics competition.
Machine Learning and Artificial Inteligence:
This is hands down the most cutting edge and interesting topic in my opinion. I have some experience working with neural networks from a summer I spent at MIT working on computer vision, voice recognition, and natural language processing. Here, my team placed 2nd against highschoolers across the country, competing for the best autonomous cognitive assistant. Currently, I am hoping to develop an AI to not beat any old game, but the Tower Defense game that I am designing currently.
