Cameron Ake

About Me

hi, i'm cameron! i'm a rising junior at harvey mudd college i'm studying cs and math. i grew up in northern virginia, so now my favorite things include urban planning, summer thunderstorms, and good guacamole. (only the really really good guacamole. i'm very picky about it.) my day-to-day interests include coding, talking about dnd, and excitedly thinking about how good sad music is.

click an image to learn a little more about me :)

math textbook reading instructions steps 14 and 15

get to know me better:

cats

did you know i really like cats?? well if you didn't you're about to. (i mean it. look at my cats)

media

i am completely normal about character development, and show tunes, and sad music, and cartoons, and-

hobbies

assorted other obsessions. i mean, um, hobbies. also friends! i like friends. also travel! traveling is the best

Cats

these are my cats back home, Siri and Floof. they are the most important thing about me. you might as well not read anything else on my about me pages.

uh anyway they're the best. Siri is the sleek, stylish one and she's very smart. Floof is... the one who looks like he's named Floof. (He's silly and sweet.) Floof is the annoying younger sibling, and Siri is the annoyed older sibling.

click an image to learn a little more about me :)

Media

i've probably said this already, but i'm such a huge fan of good sad music and good character writing. i'm also a big musical fan and have a complicated relationship with big brother and survivor.

click an image to learn a little more about me :)

albums on heavy rotation

Hobbies

some things i do when i'm not doing math or ranting about amazing music. i can never get enough of my friends or of traveling.

or sometimes of whatever game i'm playing (the worst recent culprit has been ticket to ride). if you see the ticket to ride photos and you're sad that that bot is pretty bad... well one day i decided i agreed

click an image to learn a little more about me :)

ticket to ride

Ticket to Ride win screen — Cameron 418, Jane Stanbot 44

Education

Harvey Mudd College campus: Shanahan Center

current

Harvey Mudd College

B.S., Computer Science and Mathematics

Claremont, CA · Aug 2024 – Expected May 2028

HMC is a small STEM liberal arts college of about 900 students. i'm majoring in CS and Math, positioned happily between fun conceptual insights and rewarding real-world applications.

There are always cool problems to be solving at Mudd, and it has a famously challenging curriculum. I love a good challenge, though :) I've maintained a 4.0 GPA even though only 14 people have ever graduated with a 4.0, and even though the freshman/sophomore core classes are usually the GPA-killer classes.

The best part of Mudd is being surrounded by people who are so genuinely excited by everything they do. Mudd is such a collaborative environment that everyone's passion for their work is really contagious. Like, I went into Real Analysis honestly not really expecting to enjoy it (plus, I'd heard it's one of the hardest classes in the math department, and a big part of me was worried), but it ended up being one of my favorite classes I've ever taken. (Check out the pictures below if you're curious why!!)

GPA 4.00 / 4 — Dean's List all graded semesters
Math Undergraduate Researcher, summer 2025 — published in the American Journal of Combinatorics
Grader and Tutor, CS dept. (intro CS + data structures), 2025–present
Mentor, HMC Residential Life, 2025–present
Classes: bayesian statistics, algorithms, real analysis, computer systems, database systems, data structures/program development, computability and logic, probability and stats, cs principles and practice, differential equations, discrete math, linear algebra, multivariable calc

click a photo to learn a bit about me at mudd :)

real analysis

bayesian prior and posterior distributions

bayesian statistics

data structures

systems engineering

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

High School Diploma

Alexandria, VA · Graduated June 2024

TJ is a highly-selective STEM magnet school in Northern Virginia. the curriculum pushes you hard. considering all the chaos that comes with high school i'd honestly say it was even harder than mudd. but it was also where i really fell in love with CS (math had already had my heart by then).

Like Mudd, getting all-A's is super hard, but I did. (Well, except senior year Geosystems where my A slipped to an A- in the fourth quarter, but that was intentional... because I wanted to prove to myself that it was okay to be imperfect)

GPA 4.629 / 4.0 (weighted)
National Merit Scholar
Classes: computer systems research, machine learning, ai, computer vision, data structures, complex analysis

click a photo to learn a bit about my high school experience :)

graduation, june 2024

complex analysis

Projects

Ticket to Ride Bot

A genetic algorithm that breeds Ticket to Ride AI players. Evolves a population of strategy-weight vectors through simulated selection, crossover, and mutation across multiple generations. After evolution, bots outperform current best bots.

Live Demo

Bayesian Optimization

Implements Bayesian optimization from scratch using only NumPy. Fits a Gaussian process posterior via RBF kernel and Cholesky decomposition, then selects the next sample point via UCB or Expected Improvement acquisition functions.

Live Demo

Monte Carlo Options Pricing

Prices European options via Black-Scholes and Monte Carlo simulation side by side. Adjust strike, expiry, and volatility to see how the MC distribution and expected price respond in real time.

Live Demo

LLM Agent App for Workflow Automation

Created web app to host custom AI agent workflows for Fermat R&D team, then designed workflows for it. Used Anthropic API via Bedrock, linking to Gmail/Drive/Box APIs. Balanced making LLM calls with using less costly algorithms, then designed custom algorithms to simplify tasks too dense for the LLM.

Neural Networks from Scratch

Implemented feedforward neural networks and backpropagation from scratch three times across coursework: twice in pure Python with no external libraries (including manual matrix operations), and once with NumPy, trained on MNIST handwritten digit classification. Supported configurable network depth, layer widths, and activation functions.

Augmented Random Forest

Applied skewed probability distributions to stabilize the Random Forest algorithm by introducing additional randomness to the splitting of the individual trees.

LSTM Model for Database Automation

Created and fine-tuned custom-architecture LSTM model that predicted priority and category values for messy, unstandardized M.C. Dean database inputs with wild formatting and content inconsistencies.

Resume

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