ZelanEspanto

Zelan Espanto

Welcome to my corner of the internet.

Mainly a work portfolio, partially a love letter.

You can say my name as Zee / Zeh-lan / Zi-lan.
Fun fact: “Zelan Eroz” is an anagram of my parents’ names.

Working with and learning about AI Alignment (research & applied systems) and Full Stack Development for Cloud Platforms.

I’m motivated by the challenge of becoming a more thoughtful and capable engineer every day. I believe that as tech grows, so should its accessibility and responsibility.

Outside the codebase, I love experiencing new cultures through travel and meaningful conversations (apparently getting a good story out of a taxi driver is my specialty). I love to paint and go to art museums. I’m also getting back to writing lately!

See what goes on in my brain here.

Experience

Building intelligent systems, researching how to make LLMs more aligned, and creating communities where more people can participate.

ISSACS Professional Services Group logo

ISSACS Professional Services Group

May 2026 – Present

DeveloperCleveland, OH

Developing AI agents that review budgets proposals and spreadsheets for NIH grants & adapt to solicitation-specific requirements.

AI AgentsCI/CDPython
MIT AI Alignment Initiative logo

MIT AI Alignment Initiative

July 2026 – May 2026

AI Safety FellowRemote

8-week program covering technical and governance aspects of AI safety including alignment, interpretability, and threat models.

Responsible AI
KPMG logo

KPMG

Aug 2025 – Dec 2025

AI/ML FellowRemote

ML+Data pipelines for estimating energy demand and routing tasks toward more efficient models.

PyTorchNLPHuggingFace
West Side Market logo

West Side Market

Aug 2025 – Dec 2025

AnalystCleveland, OH

Mapped basket-size opportunities across Cleveland, develop customer personas, and tailor operational changes supporting the market’s $7M renovation.

Machine LearningData VisualizationCustomer Segmentation
CWRU Department of Computer Science logo

CWRU Department of Computer Science

Jan 2025 – Dec 2025

Teaching Assistant, Data StructuresCleveland, OH

150+ students. Started freshman year, youngest in the team.

Data StructuresTeaching
Algoverse logo

Algoverse

Jul 2026 – Present

ResearcherRemote

Investigated sycophancy in multimodal large language models by designing multi-turn experimental conditions, evaluation pipelines, and benchmark-based comparisons.

LLM SycophancyMultimodal ModelsEvaluation
Nanyang Technological University logo

Nanyang Technological University

Feb 2026 – May 2026

Research AssistantSingapore

Sycophancy in LLMs

NLPLLMsHealthcare AIFairness
University Hospitals x Biswas Lab logo

University Hospitals x Biswas Lab

Sep 2025 – Jan 2026

Research AssistantCleveland, OH

Developing reproducible NLP pipelines for detecting intimate partner violence in clinical data while examining fairness, bias, and deployment considerations.

NLPLLMsHealthcare AIFairness
Fish2Meta logo

Fish2Meta

Sep 2022 – Jan 2024

ResearcherKaruizawa, Japan

Investigate the neural mechanisms underlying motor control and learning.

HackCWRU logo

HackCWRU

2026 – Present

Marketing ChairCleveland, OH

Leading full revamp and creative strategy of CWRU's biggest hackathon.

Video EditingGraphic DesignSocial Media Strategy
Phi Mu Fraternity logo

Phi Mu Fraternity

2026 – Present

Alumni Relations ChairCleveland, OH

Strengthening communication and relationships between current members and the chapter's broader alumni community.

CommunityCommunications
UWC Philippines logo

UWC Philippines

Aug 2025 – Present

Finance CommitteeRemote

Supporting the national committee responsible for expanding access to the United World College movement for Filipino students.

Education AccessFinanceService
CWRU Career Center logo

CWRU Career Center

Nov 2024 – Dec 2025

Career Consulting InternCleveland, OH

Developing career resources and communications for students pursuing opportunities in engineering, technology, and data.

Career EducationWritingStudent Support

Projects & Features

Energy Penalty Analysis for AI Inference

Energy Penalty Analysis for AI Inference

Analyzed trade-off between speed, GPU parallelism, and energy cost. Quantified that scaling GPUs for faster inference increases energy use by up to 55%, giving KPMG a clearer framework for evaluating when performance gains justify added compute.

PythonNLPEnergy ModelingGPU ParallelismML Optimization
KinCare

KinCare

Built an AI caregiving copilot that transforms fragmented family updates, care routines, and patient needs into actionable coordination support. Focused on context-aware assistance, reduced caregiver burden, and AI that fits into real family care workflows.

SwiftUILLMsRAGHuman-Centered AI
Baybai

Baybai

My first full-stack project (2023): Baybayin is a pre-colonial Philippine writing system that is no longer widely used, and this simple but meaningful project was my first attempt at turning cultural inspiration into a working end-to-end application. Tested by 35 users.

PythonFlaskKivySQLiteFull-Stack Development
C++ Limit Order Book

C++ Limit Order Book

Implemented a limit order book in C++ to model matching logic, order flow, and market data structures.

C++Data StructuresFinance
My24

My24

Do you know where your 24 hours go? Designed simple logging and visual breakdowns to help users spot patterns in how they spend their day.

SwiftSwiftUIiOS DevelopmentData VisualizationUX Design
Powering progress: Women driving science at CWRU

Powering progress: Women driving science at CWRU

Featured by CWRU for International Women and Girls in Science Day 2026.

FeatureCWRUWomen in STEM
Weatherhead students collaborate with iconic Cleveland market hub

Weatherhead students collaborate with iconic Cleveland market hub

Featured for work with the West Side Market on market strategy, customer insights, and renovation-related recommendations.

FeatureData AnalyticsBusiness Strategy
EEG Signal Denoising Study

EEG Signal Denoising Study

Compared ICA and EMD for denoising simulated EEG time series, studying how stochastic and deterministic algorithms remove artifacts from electroencephalogram signals. This was my IB Computer Science extended essay: an early independent research project in signal processing and computational experimentation.

PythonEEGSignal ProcessingTime SeriesICAEMD
Prism Adaptation Motor Learning Study

Prism Adaptation Motor Learning Study

Analyzed prism-adaptation experiments with 40+ participants to test whether motor learning transfers between different throwing movements. Led the Python pipeline for cleaning displacement data, visualizing adaptation patterns, and fitting exponential decay curves to estimate error-correction behavior.

PythonNumPySciPyMatplotlibSignal AnalysisResearch

Let's make something great together.

zeespanto@gmail.com