Minerva University
BS in Computational Sciences and Natural Sciences
Expected May 2029
- Coursework: Formal Analyses, Multimodal Communications, Empirical Analyses, Complex Systems
Juan Almanza
Education
Experience
Software Engineer
Pulpoo
Aventura, FL
Sept 2023 – Aug 2025
- Built lead extraction system using to classify, contact and convert 30K+ potential clients per location from enterprise databases; deployed across 20+ companies including Samsung and General Motors.
- Developed full-stack product including APIs, mobile app, and web dashboard; GM built predictive scheduling on this platform, improving service appointment bookings from 40% to over 90% across 10+ dealerships.
Research Intern
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Summer 2023, 2024
- Developed FFT-based instrument source separation system for orchestra recording using TensorFlow; trained on 10,000+ audio samples across 20 instrument classes, achieving 50% accuracy.
- Co-mentored 4 students on ML drug discovery project for EZH2 cancer inhibitors, achieving 9% error in potency prediction; delivered 2 CS workshops to 60 high school students.
Projects
Col-Ovo colovo.chilloa.org
- Trained a mosquito egg detection model (YOLOv8s) trained on 27,256 annotated eggs, achieving 83% mAP; in pilot testing for national deployment in Colombia.
- Developed Aedes, a cloud-based annotation platform for ovitrap images enabling crowdsourced data collection, annotation and model retraining for Col-Ovo using React.
AgroScan scidroid/agroscan
- Platform for distributing updatable lightweight vision models for agricultural tasks (e.g., cacao crop disease detection) to low-resource smartphones via Javascript Progressive Web Apps.
Blackboard AI blackboard.almanza.cc
- Experimental tool enabling AI to construct complex visual explanations from simple shapes on a real-time blackboard, featuring voice narration and LaTeX rendering. Using Claude and React.
Volunteering
Google Developers Group Barranquilla: Organized and delivered 10+ talks on AI/ML to 1,000+ attendees.
Virufy: Built data visualization tools for training data collection of 14,800+ audio samples from 80+ countries.
ASOFI: Founded an organization recognized by UN Women creating educational STEM programs in Colombia.
Honors & Awards
RISE Fellow — Eric Schmidt and Rhodes Trust scholarship (<1% acceptance)
2024
Bronze Medalist — at the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI)
2024
National Representative — at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)
2023
3x National Champion — at the Colombian Olympiad in Informatics
2021, 2022, 2023
Skills
Languages: Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, C, C++, SQL, HTML, CSS
ML & Frameworks: TensorFlow, PyTorch, YOLO, React FastAPI, Express, Tailwind CSS, PostgreSQL, Git