Hazem Algendy

ABOUT

Starting in 2020, I took classes on Drama and Improvisation which encouraged me to play different roles. A key tenent we had was to always be listening to our scene partners. When someone introduced an idea I learned how to give it a shot. When a new character came in, if they said their name was Ted, well "Hi Ted!" If they were a lawyer, then so be it —until proven guilty.

Outside class I would row. On the varsity rowing team we believed in practice above all. Every day, six days a week, I would get into a eight-man rowing shell and I'd wield a large oar through the Charles River in Boston. Together, we'd hear a thump as we entered the water and another as we feathered our oars ready to start again.

In both these cases I had to learn how to turn off auto pilot. I learned to accept feedback from my friends, my teammates, my scene partners. I found new meaning in routine and I started to look forward to learning how to get faster, how to be more reactive. Learning to love the process of learning and of trial and error is something I've come to love in everything I do.

Now, I'm a student at Northeastern University majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Electrical Engineering.

Richard's Lab is my favorite place to work on the Software and Firmware for the SEDS Lunabotics club and coincidentally is the space I get to peek at our autonomous rover from last year (2025) and our new design for 2026.

The best part about the club is seeing the autonomous algorithms try to make sense of the rover's environment— currently a volleyball court, sometimes a simulation, and soon to Florida (for an upcoming competition).

I love when I'm given open-ended projects whether in my classes or what has been the task of designing a brand new embedded control system for lunabotics. Something I deeply respect about Math or more broadly problem-solving in general, is that a high quality result is the end goal.

It's that freedom to be stubborn, to ask questions, and I love looking at what everyone else is doing and trying something new. For me, there is something special when I get to feel like I'm discovering a process rather than rigidly applying the standard.

For me, this starts with asking a lot of questions. I find it interesting to question the obvious. For example, would you rather have the superpower to fly or to teleport? Obviously I expect everyone I ask to answer:

"Well, technically if I could teleport I could also fly since you foolishly forgot to impose limits and I can thus teleport to positions in the air in rapid succession to give me feeling of flying. In fact I could fly faster this way as I'm no longer bond by my body's tendency to spontanously collapse at 10 G's."

Suprisingly, not everyone has the same answer. I think there's real power to questioning what might already be good enough. Questions might be how I explore my world but my answers are still and forever edging closer to reality.

EXPERIENCE

Jul 2025 — Present
Philips

I explored serial communication on the Philips Respitronics line of products, including the DreamStation and DreamStation 2. I learned the challenges in communicating over serial in addition to controlling other devices such as Actuated Servo Lungs through APIs.

By the middle of the summer we finished work and quality verifications that would allow the DreamStation to be released to market once approved by the FDA. My manual and automated tests writen in C# allowed us to submit our report a week ahead.
- Embedded Software
- Project Management
- Health Technology
- Serial Communication
- CI/CD Development
Jun — Oct 2022
Harvard Medical School - Massachusetts General Hospital

I cleaned motion capture data from patients and conducted analysis which I presented to Harvard Medical's partnered institutions, notably to professors at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

As summer ended, I developed a deep understanding of key data science tools such as NumPy, Pandas, and MatPlotLib which I used to visualize my findings and present ideas to restructure the project approach.
- Data Cleaning
- Presenting
- Professionalism
- Anonymizing Data
- Motion Capture
- Video Editing
Jun — Dec 2021
Shake Shack

I refined my communication and customer service skills, acting as the "front of the house". I was the interface between the kitchen and the guest, and I learned how to make people happy to stop by.

As junior year approached, I finished with a consistent record of conducting 30 to 40 percent above the quota of weekly surveys. Moreover, I had a higher than average participation rate in surveys of 75 percent.
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Customer Service
- Professionalism
- Communication
Jan — Jun 2021
Bay State Pain Associates, Clinic

I acted as a general assistant for the clinic. I bounced between assisting the receptionists, helping patients check in and schedule appointments, reducing times especially around lunch.

Additionally, I assisted the doctors on the site with routine procedures such as measuring and analyzing key indicators of health (height, weight, blood-pressure, eye-sight).
- Professionalism
- Communication
- Medical Experience
- Web Development
- Teamwork

PROJECT

MimicGPT — Stylized Chatbot

I designed a Next.js web app where users can talk to a chatbot; but, there's a twist. Underneath, Mimic generates a response which is first graded by a seperate agent who I like to call the revisor. The prompt is continually iterated upon until the revisor deems it to match all aspects of the original user's request. Additionally, users can attach files which are sent to another agent called the summarizer. The contents of the file are summarized into a general writing style. This is where it gets the name MimicGPT as the user can create a new prompt and select the files it wishes the style of the response to— well mimic.
Shane — Virtual Assistant

The assistant uses the latest OpenAI function-calling to dynamically answer user questions and requests. Besides talking to the user, Shane can decide to use its access to user-connected apps (e.g. Spotify, YouTube, Kasa) and other APIs and libraries I've connected to the platform (e.g. OpenWeather, DateTime, ElevenLabs). For example, the user can tell Shane to, "Play some funky music and set the mood" which would lead to dimming the lights and perhaps a song by Lewis Armstrong.
Mop Boss — Crime Cleanup Game

I Managed a team of 8 developers with various expertise (SFX, Programming, SFX, Level Design, 3D Art, VFX). In a little under a semester, we created a fully functional demo just in time to present at the Northeastern Fall Games Showcase. Even still, we organized our time in a way that allowed us to iterate on the game, including mechanics and models that did not feel quite right.
Speed Simulator — Massively Multiplayer Game

Myself and a small team of developers worked on this game which now has over 46 million visitors and millions of hours of playtime. My contributions include dynamic datastorage and easy modification and access to data for leaderboard stats and player upgrades. Additionally, I fixed many game-breaking bugs, performance and security-wise.
Bot Ball — Autonomous Robotics Competition

We won 1st place in our initial round and 2nd place regionally thanks to the robot's ability to readjust and counteract drift— the key hardware limitation of the Create iRobot. I developed this bot's odometry from scratch, collaborated on the claw's inverse kinematics software, and created the final hardware prototype, allowing the claw to grip cubes.
BridgIt — Connect 4 Style Game

I developed this game to cement learning about path finding algorithms. BridgIt checks if there exists a path from one side to the other for player one and vertically for player two. It uses BFS to check for a path each time a player clicks the board. Additionally, as the board structure is an undirected graph, it must keep track of previously visited tiles (nodes) to avoid infinite loops.
Happy Hampster? — 2D Hoard Clear Game

The game was built for the 48-hour Ludum Dare Game Jam on the prompt "tiny creatures." In the game, unfortunately, you kill hampsters. I created the pathfinding and hampster states (run, idle, hug), and various optimizations. For example, object pooling, hides slain hampsters to be used later. Within two days, we received approximately 50 comments and hundreds of unique visitors, generating a small comunity and even fan art.
Subway Station Simulator — Open World Adventure

During the first week of playtest, the game hovered around 30 concurrent players. Afterwards, the game maintained an active community, accumulating dozens of daily messages. This was one of my earlier projects which taught me a lot about organization as games scale.
Subway City — Open World Adventure

This is the sequel to Subway Station Simulator. I made it over the course of a summer with key improvements being a consistent (and detailed) artstyle throughout the game, and organized systems that break the challenges into bite-sized pieces. My favorite part about the project is how I created radios on various global "music stations" which allowed radios on the same station to play and bounce in sync. Notably, this was before Roblox implemented their new audio components— which worked similar mine: to sync one sound with multiple sources abstract the emitter logic from the source playback.
Space Cafe — Space Roleplay Community

The game takes place on a lunar planet which is procedurally generated. I loved socializing on Roblox cafe games as a kid, but I also found there was a lack of variety, so I created a cafe where you would least expect it.
Get Jet — Airline Roleplay Community

This was a roleplaying game, which gained over 5000 visitors. I loved playing airline games on Roblox which hosted flights from their main airport to another. I wanted to make the experience better for passengers, so I worked with other developers to implement more realistic planes complete with working infotainment and first person views of the cabin.
Shady Clothing — Virtual Fashion Business

This was a business I founded on Roblox which had over 100 members in the organization. Additionally, we made over 10,000 sales of virtual clothing items. We made these sales mainly through advertising and sales in our homestore game. Finally, we added relevant tags which ensured our items appeared in the main Roblox catalog.
Island Showcase — Graphics Display Demo

I created this when Roblox just started major overhauls to graphics, including shadows and animated grass. One of the few Roblox experiences that had realism at the time.
Dummy Defense — Tower Defense Game

This is my take on tower defense strategy games. In my version, all your troops are "dummies." They have different gear equipped depending on their level. Additionally, unlike traditional "tower" games, these units can move.