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Alvina Yang

Hi, I'm Alvina and I write code that mostly behaves.

I'm a student at the University of Toronto studying Computer Science (specialist) and Mathematics (major).

I'm currently a Machine Learning Engineer at Shopify on the Sidekick team, where I'm working on fine-tuning LLMs and encoder-only models. This summer, I'll be joining Rippling as a Software Engineer intern on the Employee Experience team.

Past internships
  • Amazon — SDE, Supply Chain Optimization Technologies (Summer 2025)
  • Seismic — MLE, AI/ML (Winter 2025)
  • Blackberry QNX — SDE, IDE/Graphics (Summer 2024)
Research
  • Vector Institute — Causal reasoning in LLMs
  • IAI Lab — Human-computer interaction

My interests tend to jump around a bit but they usually circle the same themes:

  • Abstract mathematics
  • Natural language processing
  • Applied AI

Outside of code I also read a lot. Some of my favourite books are Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami), The Secret History (Donna Tartt), Piranesi (Susanna Clarke), and Almond (Won-pyung Sohn).

I also like building mildly unhinged projects for fun. Recently that has looked like a doxer (Hack the North winning project, using facial recognition to surface publicly available information about someone), a hackathon cheating assistant that rewrites your commits and files for you, and Rizz Glasses, an AI pair of glasses that feeds you conversation prompts in real time. Please don't ban me, MLH.

When I'm not (hypothetically) breaking hackathon bylaws, I build more normal things too, like a multiagent world simulator (UofTHacks 13 winner), live pitch simulator (UofTHacks 12 winner) and a reminiscence therapy tool (UofTHacks 11 winner).

I also occasionally write about whatever currently has my attention (whether that's a new technical rabbit hole or just things I find generally interesting). You can check out my blog here.

This is v2 of my personal portfolio (the simplified version). My old website still remains accessible if you are interested here.

If any of this piques your curiosity, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or email; I am always open to conversation.