Hello World!
Hi! I’m Joanna Chimalilo — a rising junior at Texas Tech University, double majoring in Computer Science and Economic Data Analysis (EDA). I’m passionate about software engineering, data science, and creating meaningful, user-centered projects that drive real-world impact.
My academic journey began at South Plains College, where I earned my Associate of Science in General Studies. During my time there, I worked as a peer tutor at the STAR Center, helping students succeed in a range of subjects, and served as a Resident Assistant, building a safe and supportive community on campus. These roles helped shape my dedication to mentorship and accessibility in education.
Currently, I am a junior at Texas Tech University, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, with minors in Economic Data Analysis & Mathematics. I work as a peer tutor at the TECHniques Center at Texas Tech, supporting students with learning disabilities in computer science courses. I also serve on the outreach committee for the Society of Women Engineers, helping introduce more students — especially girls — to opportunities in STEM. In addition, I volunteer with Learn to Be, a nonprofit that offers free tutoring to K–12 students from underserved backgrounds across the U.S.
Outside of academics, I love mentoring, building inclusive communities, reading, and constantly learning new things. Whether through code or community, I’m driven by the idea of using my skills to build tools that matter.
The Academic Mini Crossword is a web application I developed to help tutors create and share 5x5 interactive crossword puzzles. Built with React, Next.js, TailwindCSS, Firebase, and Vercel, the app features automatic grid generation, a puzzle library, and a student-facing play mode with instant feedback. By reducing prep time and providing reusable, subject-tagged puzzles, it improves efficiency for tutors. At the same time, it gamifies review sessions for students, making academic practice more engaging and memorable
NestHub is a resource discovery platform built for immigrants in Texas, offering real-time listings for housing, job openings, food assistance, and local community support. I contributed to backend and data workflows, using Python and BeautifulSoup to scrape and structure public data. On the frontend, we used React to create a clean, responsive UI, with designs prototyped in Figma. We also implemented a user contribution feature, allowing new resources to be submitted and reviewed. NestHub won the Best DEI Hack at Black Wings Hacks 2024 and was inspired by our team’s shared experiences as immigrants and women of color.
As part of a virtual externship with Beats, I worked on extracting and analyzing user behavior data from over 50,000 records using SQL, Pandas, and Tableau. I uncovered key trends around product engagement and usage, and presented actionable insights to cross-functional teams across marketing, product, and engineering — helping inform future feature development and roadmap decisions.
Developed a multi-strategy trading bot for the UChicago 2025 Trading Competition, focused on real-time market simulation across five assets. The bot used gRPC to interface with the competition exchange and integrated structured news to support algorithmic trading decisions. I contributed to the design of risk-aware trading strategies, including smart order execution, momentum-based allocation, and dynamic short-covering logic. The system was built in Python and deployed on a single virtual machine, with a Flask-based dashboard (Phoenixhood) for live monitoring of portfolio performance and order activity.
A student-focused platform to organize and track internship applications, deadlines, and progress. Built with React, Python and JavaScript; InternTrackr aims to simplify the recruiting season with a clean UI and smart reminders. Currently under development — launching soon!
I am happy to connect, speak about opportunties, and mentorship!