Safia Boutaleb

About Me

I'm a software developer with a deep interest in building impactful projects through technology. I recently graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in Computer Science and am now embarking on a new chapter as a Master's student in Computer Science at UCLA.

With a solid foundation in computer science and a passion for creative problem-solving, I'm eager to contribute to projects that challenge me and help me grow. In a field that is constantly evolving, I remain curious and am always open to learning something new, finding growth through both technical and life experiences.

I'm on the lookout for full-time and internship opportunities where I can code with purpose, build with curiosity, and grow alongside a team that's passionate about bringing ideas to life. If you're crafting something, I'd love to be part of it.

Python

Java

JavaScript

MySQL

HTML

CSS

C++

SQL

Git

React

AWS

Tomcat

Maven

Github

My Journey

Break Through Tech AI Fellow

UCLA

March 2024 - April 2025

Selected from 3000+ applicants for the 12-month long Break Through Tech AI program.
Engaged in Machine Learning coursework with Cornell faculty and mentorship from industry professionals.

AI Studio Fellow

DirecTV

August 2024 - December 2024

Developed recommendation engine on IMDb data (150K+ entries) by training ML models, boosting RMSE by 15%.
Enhanced features with BERT embeddings to cluster show overviews, enabling recommendations based on themes.
Boosted model accuracy by 18% (R² = 0.72) by evaluating CatBoost over Linear Regression and tree-based models.

Undergraduate Student Researcher

UCI

August 2024 - November 2024

Detected loneliness patterns with behavioral/physiological data from multiple devices for early intervention efforts.
Enhanced ML pipeline reusability by optimizing legacy code to streamline future model development.

Learning Assistant

UCI

March 2024 - June 2024

Explained topics (OS, compilers, networking) to 300+ students through office hours to reinforce understanding.
Guided lab work and debugging by helping students troubleshoot code to improve reliability and coding practices.
Supported students with 6+ hours of weekly help sessions with 20+ student queues for guidance and reduce queue bottlenecks.

Projects

Fabflix - Full Stack Web Application

A full-stack movie catalog web application built using Java, Servlets, MySQL, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript, deployed on an AWS EC2 instance with Apache Tomcat. It features full-text search with autocomplete, a shopping cart, and a complete checkout system.

Video Demo

ZotSearch - Search Engine

This search engine project was built using Python, Flask, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, featuring an inverted index implementation for efficient document retrieval ranked by TF-IDF and cosine similarity. It also integrates OpenAI's GPT-3.5 to generate concise, AI-powered summaries of search results.