Matt Martel · Astrophysics + AI · UIUC
It's the question behind most of what I build. I'm a senior at Illinois studying astrophysics, but the work I care about most is AI and automation. This summer I built an agentic code reviewer that hunts security bugs inside the OCC's CI pipeline, and before that I shipped a Pokédex for real animals that identifies the species from your photo.
Projects connect to the fields I use to build them. Select a project to explore it.
Pick one to inspect it. These are real projects — products, automations, and research from the last couple of years.
Designed and built it solo
A Pokédex for real animals: snap a photo, an AI confirms the species, and you unlock it in a numbered Dex and pin the sighting on your own map.
The model call was the easy part. The actual problem was everything around it — what counts as a confident identification, what to show when the AI isn't sure, and how to keep a collection meaningful when the only evidence is a photo someone uploaded.
So instead of a skills bar, here's what I actually reach for — and how I tend to work.
What I reach for
How I work
The first few automations I wrote each rebuilt the same scaffolding — somewhere to keep state, some way to hand the model its tools. Doing that layer properly once meant the next one was mostly assembly.
Nearly everything I've built started with watching someone do the same thing by hand for the tenth time. The work is figuring out where the judgment actually lives, because that's the part you shouldn't hand off.
Astrophysics drilled this in. A stellar model that runs cleanly can still be wrong, so you pull up the HR diagram and check whether the star ended up where the physics says it should.
The fastest way I've learned any system is to push it until it fails and then trace back why. Most of what I know about agents came from watching one do something stupid.
The honest, current version — updated when things change, not a frozen bio.
UIUC Campus Observatory40.1053° N / 88.2261° W · 227 m
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Urbana, Illinois Local sidereal time: —
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Currently
Back in Champaign after a summer building AI security tooling at the OCC. Last year of the astrophysics degree.
Shipped it this summer. Photograph a real animal, an AI confirms the species, and you unlock it in your Dex.
wilddex.appRunning the university observatory telescopes with the Astronomical Society and pointing visitors at whatever's up that night.
Looking for AI/ML and software roles starting after I graduate in May 2027 — ideally somewhere I get to build and ship real things.
Background
U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Urbana, IL
Expected May 2027. Coursework across physics, computation, and math.
The Options Clearing Corporation · Chicago, IL
Built an agentic system that reviews code diffs for vulnerabilities, then shipped it into the Jenkins pipeline so every team could use it. Also built a local RAG assistant for the security org.
PiùBlu ETS · Rome, Italy
A semester in Rome researching how AI and data analytics can track water quality and plastic pollution in rivers, lakes, and the sea.
S&D Enterprises · Elmhurst, IL
Chained n8n, the OpenAI API, and Google Workspace into internal agents that did real operational work — plus the scripts behind a company-wide Windows 11 migration.
SIGAIDA (AI & Data Science) · Champaign, IL
Weekly ML/data-science workshops and applied machine-learning projects with the group.
Illinois Astronomical Society · Champaign, IL
Running the university observatory telescopes and walking visitors through what they're looking at on public observing nights.
Sigma Nu Fraternity · Urbana, IL
Ran a $65k annual budget and $35k+ trips for 150+ people — contracts, venues, payments, the lot.
05 · Contact
I'm open to full-time roles starting summer 2027 — and always up for a good problem, a collaboration, or a conversation about space, models, or games. The best way to reach me is LinkedIn.