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PRESTON SUSANTO

DEVELOPER · STARTUP BUILDER · EECS

Preston Susanto I build AI products people ship with.

Developer, startup builder, and EECS student. Currently shipping UNVIBE and Regrade with real full-stack, mobile, and machine-learning work.

View Resume LinkedIn GitHub View My Projects

What I build

Products shipped, skills that matter, and the stack behind them.

Y Combinator

FOCUS · UNVIBE · YC FALL 2026

Putting UNVIBE on the map

Mac-first learning layer for AI-generated code. Private beta live. Applying to Y Combinator Fall 2026.

$500 UNVIBE · private investment
$300 Regrade · private investment

SHIPPED

Live products, awards, and research already out the door.

  • UNVIBE Private beta

    Desktop learning layer for AI code. Active feature shipping.

  • Regrade iOS + Android

    Graded-work review and appeals. Live on both app stores.

  • Sortify 3 awards

    SF Hacks 2026. AI waste sorting, three category wins.

  • LifeTap Hardware

    Physical SOS button with live GPS over WhatsApp.

  • Cauliform Voice AI

    Phone agents that fill real Google Forms.

  • RL research Research

    Reward shaping under Prof. Kyu Woong Lee.

CAN BUILD

What I am ready to take on next.

01 AI product features

Idea to production with LLM APIs, agents, and evaluation.

02 Frontend craft

Polished interfaces and design systems that feel intentional.

03 Backend systems

APIs, auth, databases, and cloud deploy that hold up.

04 Mobile and desktop

React Native apps and Mac-first desktop software.

05 0-to-1 founder work

Ship with real users, private beta loops, and investor conversations.

TECHNICAL PROFILE

Tools I use to build, research, and ship.

Product engineering · applied AI · reinforcement learning
01LANGUAGES
PythonC++JavaScriptTypeScript
02INTERFACES
React LibraryReact NativeNext.jsHTML / CSS
03AI / ML
TensorFlowPyTorchQ-LearningComputer Vision
04AI PLATFORMS
ChatGPTClaudeGeminiHiggsfieldGranola
05BUILD + SHIP
CursorCodexTwilioWatiGoogle Cloud
06SYSTEMS
Node.jsFastAPISupabaseDocker
FEATURED RESEARCH · RL / 01

Reward shaping for accessible AI tutoring

Testing adaptive potential functions, temporal-difference error windows, and Q-learning convergence for low-compute tutoring systems.

Read the full paper ↗
Reinforcement LearningReward ShapingAI TutoringConsumer Hardware
Y Combinator YC FALL 2026 · REGISTERING

UNVIBE

A desktop learning layer for AI-generated code. Select code, choose explanation depth, and learn how it works without leaving your workflow.

$500 private investment · Mac-first private beta · unvibe.site

  • In-workflow code explanations
  • Adjustable explanation depth
  • Project and file context
  • Saved snippets and concepts
TypeScript React Mac desktop LLM APIs
Visit unvibe.site Also building Regrade
MAJOR PROJECT

Regrade

Upload graded work and your rubric. Regrade finds credit you earned but did not get, shows recoverable points and GPA impact, and drafts a professor-safe appeal you control. Live on iOS and Android.

$300 private investment · regradeapp.tech

Visit regradeapp.tech All projects
01 — WHO I AM

Constraint is the curriculum

Preston Susanto
PRESTON SUSANTO · PLEASANT HILL, CA

Most people learn reinforcement learning with a lab, a GPU cluster, and a cloud budget. I learned it with none of those — working through UC Berkeley CS285 and Stanford CS234 on my own, training every agent on a single MacBook.

The path here ran through three countries. I grew up in Indonesia, graduated from Wesley College in Perth — where I founded the school's first CS club and grew it to 30+ members in its opening week — spent four months in Mandarin immersion in China, then moved to California alone to study EECS at Diablo Valley College.

Now I hold a 4.0 GPA while doing independent RL research under Professor Kyu Woong Lee, running campus engineering organizations, tutoring math, and shipping products people actually use — while applying to and engaging with UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, CMU, Columbia, Cornell, and Brown.

AUG 2025 — PRESENT

Diablo Valley College

A.S. Electrical Engineering & Computer Science — 4.0 GPA

Coursework across C/C++ programming, data structures, calculus series, and physics for engineers. Phillip Howe Scholarship and Manuel Gonzales Merit Scholarship recipient.

2021 — 2024 · PERTH, AUSTRALIA

Wesley College

Computer Science Prize — #1 of 110 students

Founded and co-presided the school's first coding club. Captain of three sports teams. Academic Excellence (top 1%, ×2), Gold Endeavour (top 1%, ×3), Duke of Edinburgh Bronze.

CERTIFICATIONS · Hugging Face AI Agents Fundamentals · Anthropic Claude Code in Action · Google AI Studio, LLMs & Responsible AI · Prompt Engineering (Alison) · Agentic AI (Digital Workforce)

Preston Susanto on the Golden Gate Bridge

Building in public, learning in the open.

BAY AREA · EECS · RESEARCH
Campus leadership Read the research
02 — THE ROAD HERE

Four countries, one direction

2009 — 2021

Indonesia

Where it started. Grew up bilingual in Jakarta, building my first websites at 13 — an early HTML/CSS/JavaScript project that never really stopped growing.

2021 — 2024

Perth, Australia

Wesley College. Founded the school's first CS club (30+ members in week one), captained volleyball, soccer, and basketball, and graduated #1 of 110 in computer science.

EARLY 2025

China

Four months of intensive Mandarin immersion at Wendao School — another country, another trade of comfort for growth.

AUG 2025 — NOW

California, USA

Left everything familiar to study EECS at Diablo Valley College. 4.0 GPA, independent RL research, six leadership roles, and a live app on both app stores.

Golden Gate Bridge over the bay

I didn't come to California for an easy path.

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE · SAN FRANCISCO
See the work Get in touch
03 — RESEARCH

Independent research, built to matter.

A rigorous reinforcement-learning study with a real education problem at its center.

IN PROGRESS · TARGETING ARXIV + JOURNAL OF STUDENT RESEARCH

Reward Shaping for Accessible AI Tutoring in Community Colleges

Independent researcher · Advised by Prof. Kyu Woong Lee · Diablo Valley College · Jan 2026 — present

FULL PAPER

Methodology, benchmarks, plots, ablations, and the complete research narrative.

Read the research paper ↗

Can a rolling window of temporal-difference error act as a dynamic potential function — speeding up Q-learning convergence in sparse-reward environments without a GPU or cloud compute? The paper builds and benchmarks adaptive reward-shaping heuristics grounded in potential-based shaping theory, with AI tutoring for community colleges as the motivating application: tutoring agents that adapt to students without requiring institutional compute budgets.

PIPELINE

Full training and evaluation stack built from scratch in Python — Gymnasium environments, NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib. Vanilla and shaped Q-learning baselines implemented side by side.

RIGOR

Seed-based benchmark runs, convergence plots, statistical significance tests, and ablations across TD-error window sizes W = 10 / 25 / 50 / 100.

FOUNDATION

Self-taught through UC Berkeley CS285 (Deep RL) and Stanford CS234 (RL). Every experiment in the paper runs on consumer hardware — that constraint is the point.

Open full manuscript ↗
04 — PROJECTS

Built, shipped, real

Hackathons, shipped apps, and side builds — screenshot first, details when you want them.

YC FALL 2026 · PRIVATE BETA

UNVIBE

Desktop learning layer for AI-generated code. Select code, choose depth, learn in-workflow. $500 private investment. Applying to YC Fall 2026.

  • Designed and built the core explanation flow beside the editor.
  • Active product focus with continuous feature shipping at unvibe.site.
TypeScriptReactMac desktopLLM APIs
Spotlight ↗ Live site ↗
Sortify app landing page
SF HACKS 2026 · 3 AWARDS

Sortify

AI waste-sorting platform — scan an item, get recycle / compost / trash guidance with explanations. Won Best Beginner Hack, Best Hardware Hack, and Best Use of Boxi AI.

  • Multimodal Gemini image classification behind a FastAPI backend, with Firebase and SQLite for accounts and history.
  • Google Maps bin-finding, gamified eco-scores, and sustainability education — built in 48 hours among 250+ hackers.
  • Judged live across three separate categories in one sprint and won all three.
Gemini APIFastAPITensorFlowFirebaseReact
GitHub ↗ Live site ↗
Regrade app interface
LIVE · iOS + ANDROID

Regrade

Grade appeal app. Rubric-grounded AI finds recoverable points and drafts professor-safe appeals. Live on iOS and Android.

  • Solo-built and shipped to both app stores with dual-model Claude + Gemini orchestration.
  • Evaluation harness benchmarked against ground-truth rubrics so the AI argues from evidence.
React NativeTypeScriptClaude APISupabase
Spotlight ↗ regradeapp.tech ↗
Cauliform sign-in screen
VOICE AI AGENT

Cauliform

A voice agent that calls you and fills out Google Forms for you — conversational surveys over the phone or browser, answers submitted back into the real form.

  • Gemini Live + Twilio phone calls, form parsing with required-field handling, answer confirmation, and real Google Form submission.
  • Deployed on Google Cloud Run with Docker, Artifact Registry, WebSockets, and real-time event logs. Built at the Gemini Live Agent Hackathon with a Stanford MLH multi-winner.
  • Ships its own /test console for replaying a full call and inspecting live event logs without placing an actual phone call.
Gemini LiveTwilioNext.jsCloud RunDocker
GitHub ↗ Live app ↗
LifeTap hardware panic button website
HARDWARE · AI BERKELEY HACKATHON

LifeTap

A physical emergency panic button. One press triggers an 80 dB alarm and sends live GPS coordinates to an emergency contact over WhatsApp as a Google Maps link.

  • Raspberry Pi 3 runs the alert logic in Python, serial-linked to an Arduino handling the GPS module and buzzer in C++ — a complete end-to-end hardware demo, not a slideware concept.
  • Designed for disaster response and personal-safety scenarios where unlocking a phone and opening an app is simply too slow.
  • Packages live GPS coordinates into a ready-to-tap Google Maps link, sent straight to WhatsApp via Twilio.
ArduinoRaspberry PiC++PythonTwilio / WhatsApp
Devpost ↗ Website ↗
LOCAL-FIRST AI

Jarvis

A local-first voice AI assistant — a modular agent using Q-learning for on-device adaptive decision-making. No cloud dependency by design.

  • Testbed for the RL research thesis: the same Q-learning and reward-shaping ideas from the paper, applied to a personal assistant that learns your patterns.
  • Combines a lightweight NLP layer for command parsing with a Q-learning policy that adapts its responses to usage patterns over time.
  • Runs entirely on consumer hardware, tying directly to CS285 / CS234 coursework.
PythonQ-LearningNLP
GitHub ↗
PitchNest landing page
GOOGLE DEVELOPERS ONLINE HACKATHON

PitchNest

An AI startup advisor and investor platform — founders get real-time analytics on burn rate, runway, and unit economics, plus pitch-readiness feedback.

  • Co-built with Gemini-powered analytics dashboards and intelligent recommendations; now being developed into a startup.
  • Dashboards analyze burn rate, runway, and unit economics in real time, with Gemini surfacing pitch-readiness feedback for founders.
  • Backend and data models in Node.js / Express / MongoDB for founder and investor workflows.
Node.jsExpressMongoDBGemini APITypeScript
Live ↗
CHROME EXTENSION · ACCESSIBILITY

Access for All

Accessibility software for color blindness and dyslexia — readability, contrast, and usability tools built in under 48 hours.

  • Chrome-extension-style workflows exploring inclusive design patterns and assistive web enhancements.
  • Technology that adapts to users, instead of forcing users to adapt to technology.
JavaScriptHTML/CSSAccessibility
GitHub ↗
ScholarisApp landing page
LOS ALTOS HACKS 2026

ScholarisApp

A scholarship-matching web app that helps students discover and track opportunities suited to their profile, instead of hunting across a dozen tabs.

  • Built at Los Altos Hacks 2026 to cut down the time students spend searching for scholarships they actually qualify for.
  • Matches student profiles against scholarship criteria and keeps deadlines organized in one place.
Web AppEducation TechProduct Design
scholarisapp.tech ↗

Scrolls automatically · hover to pause · drag to browse

05 — EXPERIENCE

Real clients, real stakes

Production work for businesses and organizations — revenue, deadlines, and people depending on it.

Parinama Group of Companies website
JUN 2026 — PRESENT

Lead AI Systems Architect

Parinama Group / AIBCG
  • Architecting automation systems for a four-vertical business group spanning driving, academy, consulting, and operations — integrating WATI, Calendly, and Astra AI into unified client workflows.
  • Designing agentic AI and RAG-style pipelines end-to-end: data intake, model integration, deployment planning, and operational handoff.
Agentic AIRAGAstra AIAutomationSystem Architecture
Wosado Australia storefront
JUL 2025 — PRESENT

Senior Web Application Developer

Wosado Australia
  • Own product pages, purchasing flows, pricing support, and backend operations for a live Australian beauty brand.
  • Supported $7K+ in present-day sales through sales-flow optimization and logistics coordination.
ShopifyE-commerce UXOperations
wosado.com.au ↗
Aiko Matcha website
JUN 2025 — PRESENT

Senior Web Application Developer

Aiko Matcha
  • Improved online purchasing flows, product presentation, and content for a premium matcha retailer.
  • Contributed to thousands of dollars in sales through pricing support and promotion strategy.
Wix StudioWeb DesignPython
aikomatcha.com ↗
PERMIAS Nasional website
MAR 2026 — PRESENT

Promotion & Production

PERMIAS Nasional
  • Produce event posts, infographics, campaign visuals, and social content for a national org with 10K+ Instagram followers.
  • Manage vendor-facing merchandise production — design coordination, supply ordering, shipping, and fulfillment for graduation shirts, books, and stoles.
Web PublishingDesignVendor Coordination
permiasnasional.org ↗ Instagram ↗
06 — CAMPUS

Leadership

Eight roles across six organizations — pick a card, read the bullets, follow the links.

GDG Code the Change AGS ISC SNES ICC Toastmasters Indo DVC
President Google Developer Group · DVC
  • Leading 20+ student developers in projects, workshops, and community initiatives across campus.
  • Previously Software Engineer Officer — grew into the presidency by shipping events and dev resources.
GDG Community ↗
Vice President · Project Leader Code the Change · DVC
  • Led student developers building websites for nonprofits — including educators in Borneo.
  • Managed project scoping, client communication, and delivery timelines for pro-bono builds.
Code the Change ↗
Executive Secretary · Webmaster Alpha Gamma Sigma — Gamma Psi
  • Run the honor society's official web presence and executive operations.
  • Coordinate meeting minutes, member communications, and chapter digital assets.
DVC AGS ↗
Vice President DVC International Students Club
  • Community building for one of DVC's largest international student groups.
  • Plan cultural events, onboarding support, and cross-club collaboration for new arrivals.
DVC Clubs ↗
Executive Treasurer Science & Engineering Club · DVC
  • Executive board — finances and engineering initiatives; previously Computer Engineer Officer.
  • Budget planning, event funding, and hands-on engineering project coordination.
Executive Tech & Outreach Inter-Club Council · DVC
  • Tech and outreach across the ICC; attended 10+ consecutive council meetings representing two clubs.
  • Bridge engineering clubs with campus-wide initiatives and digital infrastructure.
DVC ICC ↗
Engagement Coordinator Toastmasters International · DVC
  • Coordinated activities for public-speaking practice and member participation.
  • Designed meeting formats that keep new members speaking within their first session.
Toastmasters ↗
Event Organizer · Math Tutor Indo DVC · Diablo Valley College
  • Organizing events for the Indonesian student community on campus.
  • Tutoring math for peers — calculus and pre-engineering coursework.
Indo DVC ↗

TOOLS I USE

Cursor Claude Codex Antigravity Firebase Supabase OpenCode n8n Figma Wix Shopify Google AI Studio Browserbase Arize

CODING STACK

Python React Native PyTorch TensorFlow C++ JavaScript JSON
07 — PROOF

Awards & scholarships

2026

WINNER

Best Hardware · Beginner · Boxi AI

SF Hacks 2026 — three category wins among 250+ participants for Sortify.

WINNER · SOLO

Best Gaming Hack

Mega Hackathon 2026 — solo build against 950+ participants.

4.0

Perfect GPA

Still perfect — while leading six organizations, shipping products, and conducting RL research.

2025

SCHOLARSHIP

Phillip Howe Scholarship

$2,000 merit scholarship at Diablo Valley College.

SCHOLARSHIP

Manuel Gonzales Merit Scholarship

$350 academic merit award.

4.0

Perfect GPA

A perfect first semester at DVC while adjusting to a new country.

2024

#1 OF 110

Computer Science Prize

Top of the class at Wesley College, one of Australia's leading private schools.

TOP 1% · ×3

Gold Endeavour Award

Exceptional effort across all subjects and extracurriculars, three years running.

TOP 1% · ×2

Academic Excellence

Distinguished performance across the full academic year, twice.

BRONZE

Duke of Edinburgh

Service, leadership, and personal resilience.

08 — FULL TOOLING

Everything else I build with

Deeper map of languages, ML, cloud, and hardware beyond the front stack.

LANGUAGES

Python C/C++ TypeScript JavaScript SQL HTML/CSS

AI / ML

Reinforcement Learning Q-Learning Reward Shaping Computer Vision Agentic AI RAG Pipelines TensorFlow PyTorch OpenCV

WEB / CLOUD

React Native Next.js Node.js FastAPI Firebase Supabase Google Cloud Run Docker Twilio

HARDWARE

Arduino Raspberry Pi GPS / Serial Embedded Prototyping

AI + BUILD WORKFLOW

ChatGPT ClaudeGeminiHiggsfieldGranola Cursor Codex TwilioWati

OPEN TO RESEARCH COLLABS, INTERNSHIPS & INTERESTING PROBLEMS

Let's build something.

prestonjaysusanto@gmail.com
View Resume GitHub LinkedIn UNVIBE Regrade