Hello!

I'm Makenzie Schwartz, an aspiring full-stack software developer with a passion for building applications that change lives.

Send me a message at mawaschwa@gmail.com

Background

I'm a fourth year student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst expecting to graduate in May 2018. After graduation, I'll be moving to Portland, OR to join Carbon Black as a Software Engineer.

Ever since I was young, I've liked to build things. As a child, that usually meant playing with Legos or marble tracks. Once I discovered programming, my "building" took on a digital aspect. In the past few years, I've become increasingly interested in building teams and communities. The process of starting with a blank slate and creating something new drives me like nothing else.

Creation for creation's sake, however, is unfulfilling. I am particularly attracted to values-based projects and companies with a clear vision to either promote the general welfare, help others achieve their goals, or else add a little more fun to life.

When I'm not working, you'll most likely find me traveling abroad, lost in a good book, or playing board games with friends.

Skills
Languages
  • Python
  • C#
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • C
  • JavaScript (ES6)
  • Swift
Frameworks
  • Node
  • React
  • Cocoa / Cocoa Touch
  • SpriteBuilder
  • .NET
Tools
  • Git & Github & Gitlab
  • Trello
  • Jira & Confluence
Experience
Jun - Aug 2017
Software Engineering Intern
Sep 2015 - May 2018
Undergraduate Course Assistant
(Software Engineering, Data Structures)
Sep 2016 - May 2018
Resident Assistant
View My Resume
Featured Projects
Branch

Branch is a simple, reflex-based iOS game designed with an emphasis on minimalism and low-stakes fun. Designed using SpriteBuilder.

JudgeMental

JudgeMental utilizes natural language processing to literally judge books by their covers. A HackUMass 2017 project by Alex Karle and myself.

iAndover

iAndover was an all-in-one application for students at my high school. It provided access to lunch menus, events and athletic schedules, a campus map, and much more.

Projects

Group project for natural language processing class which aimed to assign an emoji to a given tweet based on sentiment analysis (originally proposed as a task in SemEval-2018). Used a combination of text preprocessing techniques and different log linear models to surpass baseline performance.

Python Machine Learning Natural Language Processing

Worked with a team of ten in a software engineering course to develop a web app to serve as a dashboard for Liberty Mutual's data warehousing department. I was primarily in charge of constructing the MongoDB data layer, but also served as one of the main code reviewers and wrote much of the documentation.

JavaScript Node MongoDB React Express
RememberTHIS

iOS app to replace those stacks of index cards you use when learning a new language. Users could create virtual collections of index cards with words, definitions, etc. and then practice or test themselves.

Objective-C iOS Cocoa Touch
JotTHIS

iOS app which enabled users to quickly jot down ideas and send them as emails to themselves. Received over a thousand downloads while it was on the App Store.

Objective-C iOS Cocoa Touch