Sahil Ashar

I'm currently a Software Engineer at Microsoft, on the Xbox team. I spend most of my time developing Xbox Live Service SDKs for 3rd party developers, so they can utilize Xbox Live Authentication, Social, Multiplayer, and Player Data services as part of their games.

Additionally, I'm currently volunteering as a consultant at the Texas Rocket Engineering Lab (TREL). TREL is a research focused, rocketry start-up based in Austin, Texas; with the primary goal of getting a liquid, bipropellant rocket to the edge of space by 2021. I spend the majority of my time in TREL mentoring undergraduate students in best practices in software develpment, hiring/recruiting, and general leadership values.

I previously worked at Riot Games as an Systems Software Engineering Intern in 2019, and helped write an article about my experiences on the Riot Games Tech Blog! You can check out more about my past internships and other related things on my resume.

I'm a recent graduate of The University of Texas at Austin. I received my B.S. Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2020, with a focus in Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Engineering Management.

At UT, I was a member of the Student Engineering Council, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; I was also mildly involved in studying legislation concerning the University.

In my free time, I enjoy drinking tea, solving Rubik's cubes, playing saxophone, and eating too much Taco Bell. At any given time you can find me at my desk, either playing video games or building them.

The Alito Index

Justice Samuel Alito is one of the most pro-corporate justices in the Supreme Court, paving the way for better tax and social benefits for them while not being as friendly to most middle class Americans.

We hypothesized - what if there was a way to tell, based on the make-up of Congress in a specific cycle, if the market would react a specific way? More specifically, would the make-up of the Congressional class, in relation to have similar physical features as Justice Samuel Alito, have an effect on the market and its trends?

We analyzed over 3.6k individual photos of 6 Congressional classes. Using the Microsoft Azure Facial Recognition API, we were able to classify each Congress member - and thereby each Congressional class - and assign them an 'Alito Index' based on their similarity to Justice Alito. Then, using Goldman Sach's Marquee API, we were able to pull 5 years of financial data for 100 different securities, and attempt to find a correlation between specific securities/industries and a Congressional class.

Check out our Devpost for more in-depth info about this project.

Space

Space is a multi-level arcade game, adapted from the classic Space Invaders. Space was built for use on the Texas Instruments TM4C123G Microcontroller, with a codebase of primarily C and ARM Assembly. Unfortunately, Space is not recreatable, due to the amount of custom wiring done for the ADC, DAC, and UART systems.

Dallas Ramen Guide

Dallas Ramen Guide is an Amazon Alexa Skill thats allows the user to discover new ramen places around Dallas. When prompted, the user can ask Alexa for "an overview of Dallas Ramen", or the "top five ramen restaurants", or they can ask for a "random ramen restuarant." Each invocation will give a description of the ramen restaurant in the Alexa App as well. Primarily developed in JavaScript.

MarkUp

MarkUp is a Google Chrome extension that helps students take notes and efficiently annotate and cite sources. Utilizes the EasyBib API and the Google Chrome API to help build citations. Primarily developed in HTML and JavaScript.