Research Assistant at Prof. Mattia Fazzini’s Lab

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (May 2022 – Dec 2022)

During my time as a research assistant at the University of Minnesota, I worked closely with graduate students and faculty in Prof. Mattia Fazzini’s lab to support multiple ongoing projects in the areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and software engineering.

My primary responsibility involved developing internal tools to streamline the preprocessing and analysis pipelines for NLP models. These tools helped reduce manual intervention and improve reproducibility across different research experiments. I collaborated directly with PhD candidates to understand their experimental setups and tailored automation scripts to accelerate their workflow.

In parallel, I contributed to the creation of an automated project scaffolding system designed to simplify the process of setting up and distributing course-related assignments. This system was integrated into Prof. Fazzini’s graduate-level programming courses, enabling students to focus more on development and less on setup overhead, while ensuring consistency across submissions.

Additionally, I took part in a research initiative focused on identifying recurring software bug patterns. I applied data analysis techniques to analyze codebases and identify signals predictive of future software defects. This work was part of a broader effort to enhance software quality assurance and informed ongoing tool development within the lab.

This experience strengthened my skills in Python, shell scripting, Git, and data analysis. It also deepened my understanding of research workflows, collaboration in academic environments, and the challenges of building reproducible, scalable research infrastructure.