Software Developer
Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC)
Software developer for Pomona's student government. Just getting started — more great things yet to come :)
Hello, I'm Stefanie — Hà Phương
If you want to know more about my journey, please visit this autobiography.
Me in a nutshell
I'm studying Math and Computer Science (Class of 2029) at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.
Right now, I'm interested in the intersection of pure math and practical ML/AI, with a soft spot for computer vision. Outside of research and coursework, I also just love building quirky, spontaneous projects simply for the fun of making things work.
If you want to yap or meet up or want to talk about anything, write to me !
My experience
7 stops so far, newest first — the short versions. The full stories live on my resume.
drag the timeline →
Sep 2026 — Present
May 2026 — Present
AI Program Fellow
BREAK THROUGH TECH
Twelve-month AI fellowship, selected from 4,300+ applicants. Building RAG pipelines and end-to-end predictive models, and iterating on them in reviews with industry AI professionals.
PYTHONLANGCHAINSCIKIT-LEARNPYTORCHMar 2026 — Present
Student Researcher
VIETNAM POLYMATH REU
Research in Fourier analysis and signal recovery: proofs, exhaustive simulations, and a sole-author paper in preparation.
FOURIER ANALYSISPYTHONPROOFSMar 2026 — Present
Academic Mentor
PiMA
Designed the linear algebra and convex optimization curriculum for the Math for Machine Learning track, and mentor a 4-student research team from first principles through their final presentation.
CONVEX OPTIMIZATIONSVMMENTORSHIPJan 2026 — Present
Teaching Assistant
POMONA COLLEGE CS
Ran small-group mentor sessions and weekly labs for 30–40 intro CS students, with targeted feedback on code and problem-solving.
TEACHINGPYTHONCODE REVIEWOct 2025 — Present
Research Assistant to Prof. Clark
ARCS LAB @ POMONA
Sim-to-real robot navigation: training PyTorch vision policies on hybrid real/simulated data, building Unreal Engine tooling, and deploying to Jetson hardware with motion-capture evaluation.
PYTORCHUNREAL ENGINEJETSON NANOJul 2025
Participant, Women in STEM
JANE STREET
Fully-funded Women in STEM program in Hong Kong on math and CS in quantitative trading — modeling outcome distributions and EV-maximizing strategies with traders and 50+ peers.
PROBABILITYQUANT TRADINGGAME THEORY
Things I've built
Phở-Around
in progress · optimization, mip, llm, fastapi, react
A web-based itinerary planner that frames city wandering as an orienteering optimization problem. Powered by a PuLP/CBC mixed-integer linear solver, bilingual (EN/VI) schema-constrained LLM parsing, and a React 19 + FastAPI backend with offline travel-time routing.
P-resents
published · algorithms, next.js, tailwind
A gift-exchange planner built on bipartite matching: generates optimized rule sets from group traits, cutting manual matching time by 90%. Next.js + Tailwind, with RESTful APIs and secure authentication flows.
What I'm thinking about
[Working title] On exact recovery of binary signals from incomplete Fourier data
Phuong Nguyen and Thang Pham · Manuscript in preparation · Vietnam Polymath REU · 2026
If some of a signal's Fourier coefficients go missing, when can the signal still be reconstructed exactly? The guarantees in the literature are sufficient conditions — they certify recovery but leave a gap to where recovery actually stops. This paper lives in that gap: we believe the right answer is sharper than what counting arguments can see, and cheap to check. Details when the preprint is out.
[arXiv][pdf]publication coming soon!
How Much Real Data? Training-Data Composition for Sim-to-Real Visual Navigation on a Low-Cost Robot
with the ARCS Lab, Pomona College · Manuscript in preparation · 2026
How much real data does a deployable vision policy actually need? On a JetBot line-follower scored millimetre-level against motion-capture ground truth, we sweep real/simulated training mixes with the simulated set held fixed: neither source transfers alone, hybrids keeping at least 90% of the real pool complete every run at ~16 mm, and below that lies a cliff. The real fraction — not the absolute count of real frames — is what carries transfer.
[arXiv][pdf]publication coming soon!
Off the clock
Film photos from home, and a little web darkroom called Ham Chơi. Everything on the miscellaneous shelf happens off the clock, and still shapes how I build things.