Background Work Experience Projects Extracurriculars Courses Taken Prose CV
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Christopher Laan Gsell

he / him / his


person


Arriving as a bewildered Texan, I began my undergraduate career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 and attained my diploma four years later. I am happy to now call myself not only a Tar Heel, but a proud North Carolinian after four fantastic years.



Background


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Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

MS Computer Science: Software Engineering

I am currently a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science concentrating in software engineering. I am advised by Dr. Jeff Terrell .

BA Physics: Quantitative Finance

As an undergraduate, I majored in physics with a concentration in quantitative finance – a newly established joint venture between UNC’s Department of Physics and the Kenan-Flagler Business School. The major allowed me to study the fundamental nature of our surroundings through physics, as well as learn and work in a truly unique multidisciplinary fashion. In all, my coursework covered a wide range of fields including physics, math, business, computer science, economics, and the humanities.

I studied abroad in Spain for my entire sophomore year. The primary purpose of this escapade was to achieve a longtime personal goal of fluency in Spanish – a goal I completed by the time I came back stateside. I studied at two universities in Sevilla, Spain, one public and one private, to experience the differences in the Spanish education system.


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Universidad de Sevilla

Exchange Student

The Universidad de Sevilla is a public university in Seville, Spain. Separated into different “Facultads,” or departments, it is one of the top-ranked universities in Spain. I took courses in the economics department, or “Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales.” Specifically, I took a second-year macroeconomics course and a fourth-year environmental economics course. Interestingly, courses here were graded solely on a final exam. If test-takers achieved a 5 or above (out of 10) on the test, they passed. Also important to note, the café in the economics building served the best cañas de chocolate!


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EUSA Centro Universitario

Exchange Student

EUSA Centro Universitario is a private university in Seville, Spain. Here, I took classes in marketing and psychology. Also based here is the UNC in Sevilla study abroad program office, called CINECU. I took classes here in Spanish with other UNC students, taught by proprietary professors. These classes included, Spanish literature and grammar, Spanish history, and a phonetics and phonology course.


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National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) - Yukon, Canada

Designated Leader

During the summer of 2017, I backpacked for a month in the Canadian Yukon. Immersed in sweeping landscapes and exotic wildlife, I developed my leadership and survival skills with 14 other students. For the last week of the program, the group was split in two and challenged to operate without the presence of instructors. I was chosen as one of the group’s leaders by the other students and instructors.





Work Experience


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Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center

Software Developer

Since May 2020 I have been working as a software engineer for the Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center - an organization within the Department of Biostatistics at UNC Chapel Hill. My main responsibility is developing custom software for a manuscript tracking system to be used by many universities and research centers studying severe asthma. This work is funded by the NIH, specifically the NHLBI. I work with a ClojureScript + Reagent + Re-frame frontend stack and a Firebase backend.

I have also been working on the Single Sign-On system for the NIH-funded BACPAC project. I mainly work with Auth0 for this and JavaScript for custom actions.

My advisor and I worked to improve both of these areas this past summer. Below are a couple examples of the challenges we faced along the way and our solutions:

A Small Demo Auth0 App in ClojureScript
Publication of Demo App on Auth0 Blog
Shadow-CLJS Improvement

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US Integrity

Software Developer

The summer of 2021 I have been working as a software engineer for US Integrity LLC. I am building a web app for them to better identify sports betting irregularities. I am coding in R, using Shiny, as I had never coded in R before and it was a great opportunity for me to learn. Moreover, Shiny is considered one of the state-of-the-art UI packages. The dashboard that I am building can be found here.


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Graham Capital Management

Quantitative Research Analyst

In the summer of 2018, I worked for a quantitative hedge fund called Graham Capital Management. While there, I performed analysis of competitor portfolios by combing through their SEC filings and determining the relative sector exposures. I am proud to say this analysis was forwarded to the president of the company. Additionally, I created 30-year benchmark indices in all four market sectors. While they were hypothetical portfolios, they all were uniquely optimized using different portfolio optimization techniques. These techniques included Equal Volatility, Minimum Variance, Maximum Principal Component, and Equal Risk Contribution. In all of my work, I used Python (Pandas and Numpy) and Excel.






Projects


There are many projects for which I cannot share the code or the detailed functionality. This is due to a variety of reasons including professors requesting solution code to assignments be private, companies similarly requesting proprietary data and algorithms to be private, and sponsors preferring to keep their project requests quiet. For those reasons, the projects I can share are on my Github. Summaries of some of the others can be found below.

GitHub

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Twitter

React(Bulma)

I created a custom frontend for a Twitter clone project. I deviated from Twitter's UI in a couple of different ways. First, the textbox for tweet creation is always available, limiting the barrier to entry of tweeting. Second, when a tweet is clicked, all of its reply tweets are shown below, and its retweets with comments are shown above, showing the impact of the tweet.

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2048

Javascript(jQuery)

Using jQuery, Javascript, and custom CSS, I built a functional 2048 game.

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Hack NC 2019 Project: UNC Poisson Distribution (In Progress)

Python(Shapely)

As crime in Chapel Hill has risen in the month of September, and University leadership attempts to address it with improved notification and response rates, I want to see if this crime can be modeled using a Poisson distribution. To do this, I focus on two specific, homogenous neighborhoods that have not changed significantly over the last decade – Chapel Hill Northside and Franklin Street. I then divide the crime reports into two groups: from 2011-2015 and from 2015-2019. (Before 2011, the data is sparse). Dividing the neighborhoods into small sectors and using the intensity lambda as the average number of crimes per sector, I will see if the Poisson distribution from the first group maps to that of the second group accurately. If it does, we might be able to infer that the Poisson distribution from the last four years maps to the next four years in these neighborhoods as well.



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Image Manipulator

Java(Model-View-Controller)

As part of my work in my Java II class, over the course of a semester, I built a program that can manipulate images down to the pixel level.






Extracurriculars


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Carolina Squash

President

I have played on the UNC Club Squash Team throughout my time at Carolina. As a freshman, I played number 2 on the ladder and finished the season with an 11-game winning streak. Thanks to the captain at the time and the other dedicated players, we were able to bring this team to the Collegiate National Championship for the first time in many years. While I redshirted my sophomore year in Spain, my junior and senior years I became more active within the leadership of the team. In these two years, Carolina Squash rose to greater prominence within the University and nationally. My senior year, the team finished with its highest rating in my time at UNC and capped off the season with a big win against Duke, woohoo!


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Marathon Running

Peak to Creek

For the last two years I have been marathon training. While I got injured before my first one, once I recovered, I picked it up again and completed my very first marathon in October of 2019. I have also participated in the Long Island Tough Mudder, the Aspen Backcountry Half Marathon, and numerous 5ks.






Courses Taken


Data Structures

COMP 410

Over the course of the semester in my Data Structures class, I created programs that implemented different data structures and sorting algorithms in java. These programs included a LIST Implementation using Linked Cells, a BST using Linked Cells, BHEAP, SPLT, and Dijkstra’s Algorithm for single source shortest path.

Numerical Techniques In Physics

PHYS 331

I took a numerical techniques course in the physics department. While the programs were small, they show an ability to apply concepts from calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations to realistic physical systems. Moreover, many of the projects required external data, and I came to appreciate the importance of data-driven projects.


Other Courses

Computer Science

COMP 283: Discrete Structures
COMP 401: Foundations of Programming
COMP 410: Data Structures
COMP 411: Computer Organiztion

Physics

PHYS 119:    Electromagnetism and Qanta
PHYS 281L:  Experimental Techniques
PHYS 331:    Numerical Techniques in Physics
PHYS 401:    Mechanics I
PHYS 441:    Thermal Physics

Mathematics

MATH 233: Multi Variable Calculus
MATH 383: Differential Equations
MATH 547: Linear Algebra for Application
STOR 435: Introduction to Probability

Business

BUSI 408:    Corporate Finance
BUSI 589H:  Fixed Income
BUSI 600:    Risk Management
BUSI 688:    Applied Derivatives                        

Bullfighting 101












Prose


Over my college years, I have read works have changed the way I think and feel. Occasionally, I will do a little writing of my own (more so when I had more free time). Below are a collection of some of the works that have influenced me, as well as some of the work that has come from me.



Readings