Hey! I'm Jake Torres!
I am currently a junior at Columbia University in New York city studying Computer Science concentrating in Software Systems with an interest in Astronomy and Physics. Some of my interests outside of CS and physics are board games and video games (I am currently playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Sackboy a Big Adventure) with friends, building computers and keyboards, video and photo editing, traveling (I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain Spring 2023!), walking through nature, working out, EATING (I love food, especially ramen, fried rice, and cake), reading comics/manga (reading Vagabond right now!), and hanging out with my dogs Clifford and Homer. An interest I found more recently is creative writing and satire for Bwog, one of Columbia's student news organizations, which has been super fun! I also recently directed a sketch comedy skit in Fall 2023! Another passion and hobby of mine is video game developing and modding which is what I work on in my free-time occasionally.
Experience
Riot Games Software Engineering Internship - Valorant Core Gameplay
May 2024 - August 2024 • Los Angeles, CA
I will be working on the core gameplay team for the game Valorant using C++ in Unreal Engine. I am super excited to work there next summer!
Advanced Programming and Operating Systems Teacher Assistant - CS@Columbia University
September 2022 - Present • New York, NY
Helped with the instruction of 2 courses, Operating Systems and Advanced Programming in C. Graded labs and assessments, hosted office hours, and aided in instruction of the classes. Addtionally hosted review sessions, worked to help update the grading infrastructure, and updated the courses websites.
VISER - Columbia Graphics and User Interfaces Researcher
September 2023 - Present • New York, NY
Helped improve the UI/UX of a VR application using the MRTK framework in Unity. Performed user studies to determine necessary features and fixes. Published in a research paper about the app.
Microsoft Software Engineering Internship
June 2023 - September 2023 • Redmond and Seattle, WA
Working on a project in the Azure Holmes team under Nisarg Sheth. My project - codenamed Dr Watson - would diagnose live migrating virtual machines to improve visibility for team members solving issues, help increase the success rate of migrations and would lay the ground work for future improvements that could allow for a machine learning algorithm to automatically make decisions based on the status of a virtual machine provided by API endpoints I setup. I learned about working with a massive codebase, advanced C# skils, networking, multithreading and how to use databases and logging to understand how processes and services occur in a massive system.
Meta/Facebook University Internship
June 2022 - August 2022 • Menlo Park, CA
Learned how to develop iOS applications and full stack development in Xcode with Objecive C and Swift. In the first 3 weeks of the 10 week internship, I was taught the ins and outs of iOS development in an accelerated Codepath course. During the course we made clones of IMDB, Twitter and Instagram using the moviedb, Twitter, and Parse APIs respectively. I ranked highly among my classmates due to the amount of stretch features and new features I implemented in my apps. The last 7 weeks were dedicated to my solo capstone project - Piccy, which can be found on my GitHub. This process involved me wireframing and designing the app and planning it out and then implementing the planned features.
Microsoft TEALs Volunteer
June 2021 - April 2022 • Miami, FL
Helped high school teachers teach introductory computer science classes. Gave guest speech about my experience.
Code Ninjas Sensei
November 2019 - June 2021 • Broomfield, CO
Taught kids 7-15 how to code in JavaScript, Scratch, Python, C#, and Lua by making games. Helped organize and run day to day operations in center. Created curriculum and ran weeklong day camps during the summer and winter breaks. Created and ran a Python class during Covid-19 online learning. Recommendation letter from my employer can be found on my LinkedIn profile.
Colorado School of Mines - High School Intern
June 2020 - August 2020 • Golden, CO
Helped run a Python camp for faculty, researchers, professors and teachers around and in Colorado. Wrote curriculum for introductory Python class taken in the folllowing fall semester by undergraduates. Introduced computer science through STEM related fields with an undergraduate partner to K-12 graders. Helped run Coding for Good program where high school students worked on an app to help their community. My team made a carbon footprint calculator website.
Personal Projects and Other Stuff
Personal Website
Made this website! Learned React.js and Next.js and used chakra-ui to produce this. Hosted using vercel!
Bro I'm Literally a Fish - 1st Place Microsoft Intern Game Jam
Made a game in a week called Bro I'm Literally a Fish - a 3D platforming game and collectathon inspired by Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 - all by myself! I designed the level and ideas, created 3D models, wrote the script, made the music, sound effects and pixel art and more! I also learned a lot about the godot engine and GDScript, 3D animation, texture and vertex shaders, and how to create complex systems in games. Check it out!
Discord Trivia Bot
Made a Discord Bot using Java and the JDA Discord API that could create a trivia match between 2 users with questions from an online database of 50,000 questions.
