Jonathan Tao

Computer Engineering @ UIUC

Education

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

B.S. in Computer Engineering, Minor in Semiconductor Engineering

Expected May 2028; GPA: 4.0/4.0

Coursework: ECE 220 (Computer Systems and Programming), ECE 210 (Analog Signal Processing), ECE 120 (Introduction to Computing), ECE 110 (Introduction to Electronics)

Projects

Morphi (Top 7 of 226 HackVoyager Finalist, HackIllinois 2026) — View on Devpost | View on GitHub

Python, Modal, vLLM, PyTorch, LoRA, Qwen3-VL, React Native




Morphi is an AI-powered sports coaching mobile app built with React Native that provides real-time, precision biomechanical feedback via voice narration and visual overlays.


For this project, I architected the overall backend data pipeline and authored a custom data processing script to curate training data. I utilized Gemini 3.0 Flash Thinking to distill over 2,300 labeled examples for fine-tuning a 32B vision-language model via LoRA on 8x H200 GPUs.


To support this at scale, I engineered our serverless backend infrastructure on Modal, optimizing multi-modal inference using vLLM across a 4-GPU cluster. This architecture reduced full video processing and inference latency from 3 minutes down to under 24 seconds.

Custom CoreXY 3D Printer

Designed and constructed a high-performance CoreXY 3D printer from the ground up, featuring a rigid frame modeled in Autodesk Inventor and custom 3D-printed components.



Configured Klipper firmware on a Raspberry Pi 4 to drive salvaged Ender 3 electronics, achieving high-speed printing at over 1500 mm/s with 7000 mm/s^2 acceleration. The Video shown above is the printer printing a benchi.

W.A.N.D.E.R. Autonomous Robot

Engineered a maze-solving autonomous robot featuring a custom 3D-printed chassis, integrating a gyroscope, wheel encoders, and distance sensors for robust localization.



The video above shows the robot following a preprogrammed path through boxes. Implemented a C++ pathfinding and SLAM algorithm on an ESP32 microcontroller to efficiently map and navigate unknown maze environments.

Experience

Rivian

Embedded Software Intern (Jan 2026 – Present)


As an Embedded Software Intern at Rivian, I develop firmware for the Electric Management Module (EMM) using C and Python. A key part of my role involves validating control logic through robust hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations to optimize various charging modes.


Working within a multithreaded FreeRTOS environment, I focus heavily on optimizing code at the firmware level. These efforts have directly contributed to increased fault tolerance and vastly improved telemetry systems.

Illini Electric Motorsports (UIUC FSAE)

BMS Software Lead (Aug 2025 – Present)


At Illini Electric Motorsports, I lead the BMS software team. I architected the transition of our Battery Management System firmware from a bare-metal environment to FreeRTOS, which significantly enhanced our real-time performance, scalability, and task scheduling. I'm also steering our microcontroller migration from the STM32F4 to the STM32H7, unlocking higher processing power for advanced modeling algorithms and expanding our GPIO capabilities.


To ensure reliability, I built a comprehensive HIL test environment using a LabJack and an Arduino to automate our BMS firmware validation. Furthermore, I developed and implemented Dual Extended Kalman Filters in MATLAB Simulink, which improved our State-of-Charge (SoC) and State-of-Health (SoH) estimation accuracy by over 15%.

AbbVie

Analytical R&D Software Intern (Jun 2025 – Aug 2025)


During my time at AbbVie as an Analytical R&D Software Intern, I engineered and deployed an internal Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) support agent. By leveraging LangChain, the OpenAI API, and Power Automate, I successfully reduced the information retrieval time for critical SOPs and equipment guides by over 50%.


To make this tool easily accessible to the team, I developed a Python-based integration utilizing the Microsoft Teams API. This integration enabled seamless user interaction with the LLM-powered support agent directly within their regular chat environment.

Skills

Languages: C, C++, Verilog, Python, MATLAB, Java, R, JavaScript

Hardware & Design: Altium, STM32 (H7/F4), ARM Cortex-M, HIL Testing, ESP32, Autodesk Inventor

Frameworks & Tools: FreeRTOS, PyTorch, LangChain, Git, WSL, Bazel, Linux, Docker, Simulink