University of Nottingham
MSci Computer Science
- Achieved First Class Honours (1:1).
- Awarded Best Undergraduate Research Project.
Qiang Cai
Education
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Sep 2022 — Jul 2026
Experience
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Aug 2026 — Present BNY Mellon
Software Engineering Analyst
Core platforms and frameworks for Wealth Services.
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Jun 2025 — Aug 2025 Royal Academy of Engineering - Google Deepmind
AI Research Ready Intern
Conducted and led a novel research project exploring the use of synthetic datasets generated by 3D Gaussian Splatting, 2D Diffusion, and other generative AI methods to improve performance and image segmentation fidelity in plant phenotypingb and disease segmentation tasks.
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Oct 2023 — May 2024 University of Nottingham School of Computer Science
Lead Backend Developer
Served as Fullstack Engineer and Team Lead for a VR compatibility layer integrating retro text-based adventure games, overseeing a team of 8 developers and ensuring on-time delivery through agile methodologies, SOLID principles, and structured stand-ups. Additionally spearheaded the development of an API system and emulator backend using C# and C, and awarded "Best Showcase" for delivering a technically ambitious, standout user experience.
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Sep 2023 — Jun 2025 University of Nottingham
Senior IT Support Assistant
Supervised 21 Junior Assistants whilst providing front-line technical support to 44,000+ students and faculty in a timely and effective manner. Assisted in troubleshooting hardware, software, and network-related issues by utilising Microsoft Azure Entra ID, networking management, and customer service skills to properly diagnose issues and escalate faults to ensure customer satisfaction.
Projects
Citrus Engine
Citrus is a 3D game engine that aims to deliver high performance without compromising graphical quality.
C/C++OpenGLGLSLCMakeSDL2
Lemon Renderer
A custom graphics/rendering engine built in OpenGL that was developed as an aide whilst learning OpenGL. It includes Volumetric Lighting, IBL Lighting, PBR, HDR, Ambient Occlusion, Compute Shader support, Deferred Rendering, etc.
C/C++OpenGLGLSLCMakeWindowsLinux
Parameter Optimisation of Heterogeneous Rainbow Tables
An optimisation framework for constrained optimisation of hetereogeneous rainbow tables implemented using Python and various search algorithms, reinforcing prior research and identifying further performance enhancements in TMTO based attacks.
PythonNumPySciPyCVXPYPyomo
Augmented Plant Leaf Image Segmentation using Synthetic Datasets
A novel research project exploring the use of synthetic datasets generated by 3D Gaussian Splatting and 2D Diffusion to improve performance and image segmentation fidelity in plant phenotyping segmentation tasks.
PythonSciKit-LearnPyTorchCOCOImage Segmentation
Autonomous Mobile Treasure Hunting Robot
Modular ROS2 autonomy stack for exploration and navigation using frontier clustering and A*-based safe-goal synthesis with radial fallback. Trained a YOLOv8s detector on blended real+synthetic data with Blender-based domain randomisation.
PythonROS2PyTorchYOLORobotics
SugarBeets 2016 Data Scarcity Segmentation Challenge
A semantic image segmentation pipeline custom build to address data scarity scenarios in precision agricultural contexts. Implemented methods consist of a custom composite loss function, vegetation indices, an aggressive image augmentation stack, and sliding window inference on DeepLabV3+. Achieves 0.83 mIoU and 97% accuracy.
MATLABPythonPyTorchYOLOCUDAMachine Learning
BilboVR: There and Back Again
A VR compatibility/translation layer for retro text-based games that allows for a unique user experience and retelling of older games, without the need for porting existing codebases to new systems.
C/C++C#UnityZ80 ASMHardware Emulation
Fileryze
An intelligent AI-powered file sorting application using Python developed during a 24-hour hackathon to tackle disorganised file systems by automating file categorisation and sorting with precision
Python
FaunaLang
An toy imperative programming language developed using functional programming via Haskell.
HaskellFunctional Programming
Bridge
A simple minecraft plugin to relay messages between minecraft and discord servers and allow for account linking and whitelisting capabilities.
JavaPaperMC/SpigotSQLite
Operating System Process Simulator
An operating system process scheduling simulator built using C and POSIX APIs. Implemented various concurrency methods and OS systems such as burst/round robin scheduling, mutual exclusion and semaphores, load balancing, interrupt handling, etc.
C/C++POSIXConcurrency ProgrammingMultithreaded Programming
Hyperheuristic TSP/UAV Problem Solver
A heuristic based problem optimiser for the variant of a dynamic TSP problem built using Java and HyFlex HyperHeuristic framework.
JavaSearch Algorithms
Portfolio Website
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