Aaron Keith-Akins


PROFILE
aaronkeithakins16@gmail.com
+1 (612)-594-0711
LinkedIn
Instagram




"There's no such thing as a painless lesson, they just don't exist. Sacrifices are necessary. You can't gain anything without losing something first. Although...if you can endure that pain and walk from it, you'll find that you now have a heart strong enough to overcome any obstacle. Yeah... a heart made Fullmetal."

“No, it’s an alien”





Education
Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science (Aug 2024-May 2028)
    -BS Computer Science and Engineering
    -Minor in Psychology and Neuroscience
    -Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
    -3.81 GPA
    -4x Deans List

College of Southern Nevada                                  (Aug 2022-May 2024)
    -AS in Computational Linguistics
    -4.0 GPA
    -4x Presidents List

CSN High School West (Aug 2020-May 2024)
    -Valedictorian
    -4.95 GPA


Employment or Experience Endless Studios (A Dalio Family Company) - Founding Program Lead & Technical Lead
-New York, New York|  May 2026 - Present
-Led a new technical education and outreach branch of the Endless Studios ecosystem, owning program scope, strategy, and direction while managing a team of 5
-Launched the inaugural cohort of 32 colleges, 548 students, nationwide within a single summer; Organized and operated a national competition and student summit across all participating schools
-Served as technical lead, resolving engineering issues and guiding implementation and debugging across all team workstreams

Komune Space -  Technical Product & E-Commerce Lead
-New York, New York|  Jan 2025 - April 2026
-Built and managed the company’s e-commerce website, leading frontend design and backend database organization; online platform now drives ~68% of total store revenue
-Sourced and onboarded 3 emerging designer brands, generating ~$43,000 in revenue through in-store and online sales
-Managed 2 contributors across development, directly guiding implementation, debugging, and supporting UI improvements


Quizbowl Co-president (Previous Treasurer)
-Columbia University | Sep 2024 – Present
- Lead team strategy, competition planning, and community initiatives with co-president for team of 27
-Organize and perform in annual competitions; generated $2,476 in revenue for club


Payvment –  Full Stack Development Intern
-Cambridge, MA | Jul 2022 – Sep 2024
-Developed and optimized front-end and back-end systems for license plate recognition and user interface for MIT startup
-Collaborated with team of 3 to design, implement, and maintain core application features
-Improved system efficiency, reducing load times by 27% and optimizing database queries to handle 2× more user requests


Language and Learning Lab – Research Assistant
- University of Nevada | Jan 2021 – Aug 2024
-Collaborated with three colleagues on research to enhance translation algorithm accuracy in conveying nuanced meaning between English and Spanish
-Reported weekly updates to lead researcher; contributed as third author to a paper published in Aug 2024
-Used corpus analysis, sentiment analysis, and ML models to identify patterns in emotional/contextual misinterpretations


Independent Research – AI & Computational Linguistics
-Las Vegas | Sep 2022 – Jul 2024
-Conducted independent research on quizbowl question comprehension under guidance of a Johns Hopkins Ph.D. advisor
-Developed AI-driven methods (KNN, vectorization) to improve response accuracy for complex, knowledge-based questions


Honor IT Solutions – Lead Intern
-Las Vegas, NV | Feb 2022 – Sep 2023
-Managed backend implementation and maintenance for casino systems
-Assessed and redesigned system infrastructure to address rollout challenges and improve functionality


Spanish Speaking Initiative – Founder & Head Instructor
-Las Vegas, NV | Aug 2021 – May 2024
-Partnered with CCSD to reform curriculum and expand support for Spanish-speaking students
-Led tutoring and translation efforts using bilingual student volunteers to bridge language barriers


Relevant Coursework Computer Science: Data Structures, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computational Linguistics, Fundamentals of Computer Systems, Advanced Programming, Operating Systems, Databases, NLP, User Interfaces

Mathematics: Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra and Probability, Discrete Mathematics

Neuroscience & Psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Neuroscience, Psychology of Neuropsych and Language, Evolution of Language

Economics & Business: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Project Management, Human Centered Design and Innovation, 

Engineering & Physical Sciences: Signals and Systems, Fluid Mechanics, Advanced Physics I–II, Advanced Physics Laboratory, Advanced Chemistry, Biology I-II

Skills
 Programming: Python, Java, C++, C#, C, JavaScript, SQL, R, HTML/CSS, Ruby

Tools: Git, Linux, PyTorch, React, AWS/Firebase, Docker, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Figma, Photoshop

Languages: English, Spanish (native), Japanese (conversational)

Personal: Arcade Cabinet Games, General Trivia, Quizbowl, Car Restoration, Silver Smithing, Robot design and Assembly, Origami, Dungeons and Dragons, Sleeping, SA Spurs Knowledge, Manual Drifting
Awards
 Academic: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad Top 1% · AMC 12: 135 · AIME: 13 · National Merit · AP Scholar with Honor · College Board Hispanic Recognition · Nevada State Honored Scholar

Competition: Galaga World Record Holder · 2026 Pop Culture Bowl US Champion · 2× Nevada Quizbowl State Champion · #1 Ranked Individual Player (NV) · #1 Individual, ACRONYM 2025 · Nevada Science Bowl Champion · 2× BattleBots Champion · 2× Nevada Yu-Gi-Oh! Champion

Service & Other: 2× Gold Presidential Service Award · Clark County Superintendent's Award · Clark County Outstanding Service Award · STEAM Award · Nevada 2A Best Third Baseman












Me Beyond the Resume

Honestly - I feel that too often in the process of applying to a job an applicant is made nothing more than a sheet of descriptors that don't add any true context outside of possible qualification so here I want to have some dialogues - some short and some long- so, hopefully, you can come to understand some of what makes me tick - what the drum in my chest is beating out

(I chose the fish because of the first song I had playing)


If there’s anywhere to start and understand me you need to see how I work ... so here’s everything that I thought about in 25 minutes (an uncurated and somewhat meta discussion on anything and everything)

I’ve been pondering over what would be the best thing to start with to get to know me for days now and hitting this perpetual writer's block - so I said fuck it honestly grammar might take a little hit here I have never been the best at that, English was my second language, so sorry if any confusion or road bumps pop up along the way, I’m trying to keep this as raw and real as I can so no edits can be made. I learned Spanish first, actually my first ever word was pan which means bread in Spanish guys I love bread I mean I fucking love bread I wish that the US gets more into sweet bread making. I feel like all the varieties here you see are great for your litany of sandwiches - oh you want a grilled cheese I got you or you want a ham and Swiss try this out fuck you want steak and eggs with a green chimichurri and pickled peppers I mean why not this one - but there's no good solid sweet bread like there are in Mexico or East Asian countries. I mean a nice semi-sweet bread that you can throw back with a coffee or a chocolate milk in the morning why not. But anyways, Spanish was my first language, my grandma and mom both taught me how to speak it since they’re both from Mexico, Mexico City or as it used to be known el DF (de - effe). I always loved it but it really did make those early years hard I was born in Texas, Texas guys why Texas, in Houston, during a hurricane, right after Katrina had hit Louisiana, and so I was like you know what let me pull up. It’s crazy to see those pictures of people standing on their homes flood water completely engulfing everything but the peak of their roof. Those pictures always make me think of the Bush admin which goes right into the early 2000s, do you remember what it was like back then every holiday felt so magical even the most mundane of places, Target Starbucks the Apple Store Barnes and Nobles so forth and so forth, felt like a warm hug, everything was so inviting even in times that weren’t nearly as accepting as they are now. I wonder what happened to that wonder, obviously a big part of it is growing up, you have those prepubescent rose-colored glasses so to speak everything covered in a veil of beauty but nowadays so much feels jaded feels sterile the places where I grew up feel unhospitable. I feel like that's also a big reason I think about that vibe so much, I have lived in 9 cities so far, so I never had those tethers to a home or to a person outside of family or to a place that reminded me of when things were simpler when higher level cognitive processing and an understanding of circumstances around me truly set in. I miss that vibe it’s so rare that you find places that even though they are trying to provide a service or good and that is their main goal also feel so hospitable and click in an intimate way beyond being a client.
Anyways... writing what comes to mind is such a weird feeling honestly I have this Professor X Martian Manhunter thing going right now where I feel like I have a telepathic link established with someone and I am just sending them my stream of consciousness or rather they could just be looking into mine and we’re holding a dialogue up here. You ever watch those DC animated movies and shows? If not I cannot recommend them enough I mean holy shit the MCU has all its ups and downs and the DCU has all its downs but the Animated DCU is fucking amazing, little looks into almost perfectly accurate representations of what the characters they're portraying are meant to represent. I think that's what gets lost in a lot of adaptations or machinations relating to superheroes with the world of popular media and films today, the makers almost never properly capture what that character was made to represent or evoke. I honestly have never been a stickler of comic accurate in terms of ways that different creatives choose to interpret their superheroes but I want them to be the symbol that they were created as or that over years and years and years of talented writing and devoted fans they have become. One great example would be the Sony animated Spider-Man projects the Spider-Verse films. I mean ignoring the animation (which holy fuck they essentially reinvented modern animation created a whole wave of new gen animation projects that are original with varying art styles that are more representative of the film and are continuing to push the boundary of expression and vision with animation) the characters do exactly what they’re meant to do. First the films are not based off of any comic story, they take a lot of liberties with the characters - I mean you think Kingpin always looks like that and before these movies Miles Morales was actually one of the most hated characters in the whole of the Marvel lineup - but they took these characters put them in a setting they forged in a story they boarded and with some changes that made them different than their comic counterpart but they made them true to their nature, Miles is a brash caring kid who is meant to stand for resilience and courage in a world without a Spider-Man, older Peter Parker is there to show us the most human of any superhero struggling with marital and financial troubles but still always always always sticking his neck out. God I love those movies so much probably some of my favorite movies of all time. Plus I love Miles Morales actually did you know that he is based off of Childish Gambino - so when Donald Glover was on Community in 2011, he had just dropped his first studio album as Childish Gambino and Heartbeat was charting, he has a Comedy Central stand-up special that was a hit, he was both writing and acting in a fan favorite role on Community, and then Sony announced that they were looking for a new actor to play Spider-Man. One of the first ever widespread internet trends of my lifetime was the #DonaldForSpiderman and boy did it catch on. It caught on so hard that even though Sony ended up not casting him - Marvel decided that he should be Spider-Man and so they made him his own Spider-Man Miles Morales. Community actually hinted at this in the season premiere of season 2 with Donald Glover’s character, Troy, being seen in a Spider-Man longsleeve and that scene actually is playing on a TV in Uncle Aaron’s apartment in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Sorry sorry sorry I am and weirdly always have been a sponge for any information I hear so much so that I have been able to nationally rank in competitive trivia several times - god I love quizbowl it's so incredibly fun (click here to try it). Anyways back to what I was saying with my DC animated universe stuff there’s one DC animated film where Bruce Wayne is found by Martian Manhunter right after the latter had arrived on Earth for the first time and Martian Manhunter read Bruce’s mind seeing that he was the Batman so he ended up approaching him later. Off of just the information that Martian Manhunter was an alien and could use telekinesis Bruce was able to deduce that Martian Manhunter was most likely a Martian and that his weakness is fire. Fuck I love Batman that was so fucking cool wait here watch this scene (click here).
Oh shit there goes my 25-minute timer - well it was fun I hope this gives some sort of glimpse into this big ol’ noggin of mine.




Oh also all the music I chose - unfortunately there's a 250 mb limit so I couldn't include it all but I wanted stuff that captured a mood that I have never been able to properly capture. There’s no sadness no anger some joy but mostly there is thought thought on what's around us, thought on ourselves, thought on those we talk to, thought on aesthetic, thought on choice, thought
Here was the original list:
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - Radiohead
The Vanishing American Family - Scubaz
Lost in the World - (unfortunately) Kanye, and Bon Iver
Fall Down - Crumb
Ristorante - Vincent Delerm
The Flower Called Nowhere - Stereolab
Autumn Leaves - Ryo Fukui
White Sands - Alessandro Alessandroni
Bishmillahi ‘Rrahmani ‘Rrahim - Harold Budd

Here are the ones I kept:
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - Radiohead
The Vanishing American Family - Scubaz
Ristorante - Vincent Delerm
White Sands - Alessandro Alessandroni

(I think this is one of the greatest ad campaigns ever and scratches an stylistic itch in my brain)



The Requisite of course - here is my freeform stream of consciousness take on fashion, high fashion

If there’s one thing I think about almost every day without ever meaning to it’s high fashion — not in the sense of what’s trending or who wore what where, but more in that ambient background hum of image and intention and cut and reference, how a piece of clothing can act like a thesis statement if you know where to look. I’ve always felt like good fashion is a kind of memory-keeper, or maybe a way to push back against the sense that time just keeps slipping. Like when I saw Rei Kawakubo’s Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection from 1997 — the one with the padded lumps and distortions — it felt like someone had made a garment out of the idea of resistance, or self-perception after dislocation. It wasn’t beautiful, not conventionally. But it said more than a paragraph could.

That was the first time I really understood what Comme des Garçons was doing, what Rei was doing — the way she doesn’t make clothing so much as she proposes an argument. It’s cerebral, yes, but also deeply emotional in a way that takes time to understand. The 2005 “Broken Bride” collection still haunts me — the way the tattered silks and frayed edges looked like someone remembering love in a fever dream. Junya Watanabe, when he was still a protégé under CDG, once said that he wanted to make clothes that “work with the body like architecture,” and I think about that when I look at his S/S 2002 denim reconstruction — how the patchwork wasn’t just aesthetic, it was structural, literal scaffolding wrapped in narrative.

There’s something so precise in that era of East Asian fashion — Kawakubo, Watanabe, Issey Miyake’s A-POC line from 1998 where he started experimenting with seamless garments, garments created in a single thread. That was a revelation. No waste, no cuts, just one continuous body — the idea of fashion as a living thing, not just cloth draped on a body. Or Yohji Yamamoto’s 1999 menswear collection, the all-black suits with deconstructed lapels and asymmetrical hems that hung like a half-finished poem. Every stitch intentional. Every gap meaningful.

And then Margiela. God — Margiela feels like the ghost that haunts all of it. Belgian but often spiritually aligned with that same rejection of surface-level polish. The 1997 collection with the Stockman dress forms still attached to the garments. Or the 2006 artisanal line where old gloves were turned into vests — the way he made something feel clinical and vulnerable at the same time. Margiela doesn’t just deconstruct garments, he deconstructs the viewer. He asks you to consider whether what you’re looking at is finished. Whether you care.

When I was in high school I got obsessed with the idea of wearing something that no one could quite figure out. I found a deconstructed Ann Demeulemeester blazer from the early 2000s at a vintage store buried under mothball-stinking coats and I remember putting it on and feeling like I understood the shape of my own thoughts better. Something about how the sleeve hung too low, how the buttons were slightly off — it was poetic in a way that didn’t need to announce itself. That’s the thing I’ve always found in the work of these designers — a kind of refusal to explain themselves. You either get it or you don’t.

Thom Browne took that same impulse and made it brutal. The S/S 2014 menswear collection with shrunken suits in metallics, the prison stripe themes, the way the tailoring felt militarized but still vulnerable. It was fashion as discipline and satire at once. Meanwhile, Rick Owens (who I think is often misunderstood as purely “edgy”) has always struck me as someone deeply romantic. His F/W 2017 collection where the models looked like futuristic monks draped in industrial wool and leather wraps — that wasn’t about fashion, that was about ritual. About permanence.

And then you have someone like Craig Green, whose S/S 2015 collection featured garments that looked like exoskeletons — they were inspired by notions of labor and protection and masculinity and fragility, and that contradiction became wearable. Craig said something in an interview once, something like “It’s okay for men to feel delicate.” And that stuck with me. Because I do. And I think I always have. And it’s comforting to know that there are designers building spaces for that — for softness that doesn’t demand explanation.

But East Asian fashion, especially, keeps pulling me back. Not just because of the construction or the minimalism or the confrontation — but because it feels like an alternate way of thinking through selfhood. Rei, Yohji, Issey, Junya — they’re not designing for attention. They’re designing for introspection. The garments don’t scream. They murmur. They pull you in close. And you have to listen.

I remember when I saw someone wearing Y’s in public for the first time — like really wearing it, not just styled for a runway or a campaign. It was this woman at a museum, wearing a wool skirt with oversized pleats and a button-down that hung like a curtain caught in the wind. She looked like she was from another time. Or no — like she wasn’t in time at all. That’s when I realized how rare it is to see clothes that don’t anchor a person to a trend or a moment, but instead free them from it.

I think fashion is one of the only fields where that’s possible. Architecture does it too, maybe. Certain kinds of music. But fashion — when it’s right — it lets you build a language for yourself. Not just how you look but how you move through the world. How you’re read. How you resist being read.

Lately I’ve been looking more at the intersection of Asian and Western high fashion — like the way Sacai (Chitose Abe) blends Japanese restraint with Parisian silhouettes, or how AMBUSH has evolved under Yoon Ahn to become less about hype and more about intention. I think some of the best hybrid work is being done now — like Kiko Kostadinov’s early Asics collaborations or even Wales Bonner’s cross-cultural tailoring.

I’m realizing now this whole ramble is just a long way of saying that I think about fashion the way people think about philosophy. It’s how I understand time, and place, and myself. It’s how I remember things — people, feelings, eras. When I look back on the person I was at 16, I don’t remember the conversations or the moments. I remember the first time I put on a raw-hem CDG blazer and walked into a room like I was allowed to take up space.

Not because the blazer was expensive. Not because it had a logo. But because it made me feel like I had something to say. And maybe that’s the goal. Maybe that’s all fashion ever was. A kind of private thesis, broadcast in silk and wool.

Anyway. 25 minutes. Timer’s up. Have a good one!!



(Here are a few sketches that I think hit it)



What I actually like doing is somewhat interesting, I myself have always been all over the board so we will go chronologically:
- I love dinosaurs anything everything all about them
-Movies all American movies past 1960 just all of them can’t get enough
-Sitting on a couch absolutely rocking all and any show
-Comics (my favorite hero is probably nightwing from his most recent run and my favorite villain is probably morlun from spiderman)
-Anime I mean come on who isn't
-Lego
-Origami
-Math
-Coding (honestly was a happy accident I didn't mean to sign up for it in freshman year of hs and I ended up loving it)
-Restoring 1970s-2000s Japanese sports cars (right now at home I have a 1978 toyota supra mk3 with a 2jzGTE twin turbo non vvti with an r154 and previously I had a datsun 260z)
-Silversmithing (just wish there was a better studio I could use in the city, Columbia doesn’t have one)
-Dungeons and Dragons (so so so many hours spent here)
-Piercings and tattoos (I mean come on obviously)
-Collecting cds cassettes and vinyls
-Creating and building (I have designed and built a robotic hand that can mimic the range of motion of the human hand and respond to voice commands, a belt buckle that doubles as a cassette player, a litany of weird little household specific items for specific purposes, a clear outer skin for the ps5 to make it look like the clear tech from the early 00s, and so so much more I have a whole list but I love making shit I guess that's how I ended up at engineering school)
-Broadway Musicals
-Jazz bass guitar
-Art (thank you spiderman)
-Welding
-Circuitry
-Cognitive Science and Neurocognitive Computation
-Candle Making
-Mixtape producing
-Different types of wood used in furniture making over the years
-Leather Tanning
-Quantum Computing
That about wraps up the modern list of my hobbies and stuff that I actively love and partake in its so so much but fuck do I love them all and I want to do even more!!


Honestly thank you - truly truly thank you. This little project took me a few hours and I really do appreciate anyone who read through all of this. I hope that now you have a wider grasp on me the whole picture of Aaron because thats what I want you to know. I am and always be me even when that me inevitably changes down the road and I have hundreds of times before. I leave you with Oh Lord by Foxy Shazam which just felt like the perfect closer. A great day to all and to all a good night!