Melina O'DellMelina O'DellMelina O'DellMelina O'DellMelina O'DellMelina O'Dell

Melina O'Dell

Melina is a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

She is a former long-time Web Systems instructor and has multiple software engineering internship experiences.

She is passionate about web development, teaching and education, supporting women in STEM, and perpetual learning. In her free time, she enjoys playing music, listening to tech podcasts, and learning about Emacs.


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Engineering Academic

Projects

Twitter Countdown Bot
Retweeted by the official movie account!
A simple Twitter bot to countdown the days to a movie premiere. Uses the Tweepy library to access the Twitter API. Deployed and scheduled with Heroku to make daily tweets.
Python
Twitter API
Heroku
Personal Website
You are here!
An autobiographical static site built with Astro. Styled with Fomantic UI. Hosted on GitHub Pages.
Astro
React
JavaScript
HTML
CSS
GH Pages
Dotfiles
"git status"? You mean "gs"?
My dotfiles! Continuously updated and filled with bash customizations, aliases, my Emacs configuration, and more.
Bash
ELisp
Unix
Course Schedule Converter
Saving myself 20 mins/semester
A Python program to convert my class schedule (HTML) to an iCal file to automate making calendar events.
Python
BeautifulSoup
iCal
Doors on Floorplans
My Verkada intern project
Supporting Access Control devices (doors) on the Floorplans UI in the Verkada Command platform. Users can move, scale, and rotate door representations to match their physical space.
React
Redux
TypeScript
App Init Refactor
My 2nd Verkada intern project
Refactoring the app initialization for the Verkada Command platform to improve initial load times by 90%, and updates to page speed metrics to track improvements over time.
React
Redux
TypeScript
Datadog
Search Engine Dataset Enhancements
"Biggest PRs eva" (3 mil+ lines)
A redesigned dataset and test suite, and a workflow to automate future dataset regeneration for the search engine project in EECS 485.
Python
SQLite
Pytest
MapReduce
Instructor Dashboard
My LAZ intern project
A full-stack dashboard to summarize and display classroom performance statistics to elementary school teachers.
Angular
Laravel
TypeScript
PHP
MySQL

Papers

Publications

A Custom Generative AI Chatbot as a Course Resource
Yutong Ai, Maya Baveja, Akanksha Girdhar, Melina O'Dell, and Andrew DeOrio. American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), June 2024.

Coursework

Strategic Data Ablation for Fine-Tuning LLMs for Logical Question Answering
Jeff Brill, Melina O'Dell, and Max Liu. December 2024.
Can AI models generate free response questions for AI courses?
Yutong Ai, Melina O'Dell, Mingye Chen, and Fanghao Zhang. April 2024.
Optimizing Text Entry with Intuitive Keyboard Shortcuts: User-Centered Insights
Yutong Ai, Carter Galbus, Cooper Hickmott, Alex Morton, and Melina O'Dell. December 2023.
Improved Piazza Search
Julia Aoun, Chimmuanya Iheanyi-Igwe, Mariam Mahmoud, Melina O'Dell, and Sydney Swider. April 2023.

Talks and Lectures

Recommender Systems (EECS 485, Lecture 21)
Melina O'Dell. Ann Arbor, MI, November 2024.
Networking (EECS 485, Lecture 14)
Melina O'Dell. Ann Arbor, MI, October 2024.
A Custom Generative AI Chatbot as a Course Resource (ASEE Paper Presentation)
Melina O'Dell, Maya Baveja, and Akanksha Girdhar. Portland, OR, June 2024.
Parallel and Concurrent Programming (EECS 390 Guest Lecture)
Melina O'Dell. Ann Arbor, MI, April 2024.
Server-side Dynamic Pages (EECS 485, Lecture 3)
Melina O'Dell. Ann Arbor, MI, September 2023.