Mohammad Abu Daqer

Computer Graphics

DE1-SoC Pinball Engine

When

Winter 2022

Role

Co-author · UofT ECE243

Result

Ran in real time on the board and in the CPULator simulator

A fully from-scratch C implementation of a pinball game physics engine and renderer targeting the ARM-based Terasic DE1-SoC board. The game drives a VGA display, simulates rigid-body ball dynamics and collisions, and maps user input (flippers, launch) to hardware buttons, running in real time on an FPGA-backed HPS core. Demonstrated both on actual hardware and via the CPULator DE1-SoC simulator.

Embedded Systems & Low-Level Programming · Physics Simulation & Graphics Rendering · Performance Optimization · Toolchain & Debugging · Software Engineering Practices

Generative Graphics

Pixelmon Dream Generator

When

Fall 2024

Role

Co-author · UofT APS360 term project

Result

New Pokémon-style creatures, plus a write-up of the training collapses hit and how they were mitigated

A DCGAN that learns from a curated Pokémon image dataset to synthesize entirely new, Pokémon-style creatures. End-to-end: data collection, preprocessing, model design, training loops, and qualitative evaluation in a clean Jupyter workflow.

DCGAN · Convolutional Networks · Image Preprocessing · Python/Jupyter · Git/GitHub

Audio / DSP

Real-Time Web Audio Instrument

When

Early 2026

Browser-based real-time audio instrument using the Web Audio API for low-latency signal processing and interactive sound generation. This sits beside graphics because it is another real-time creative computing system: input, signal, timing, feedback, and direct sensory response.

TypeScript · Web Audio API · DSP · low-latency signal processing · interactive sound generation

Real-Time 3D / WebGL

This Universe

When

Nov 2025 – present

Role

Sole builder

The site you're in. A portfolio you fly through instead of scroll: two universes, a planet per discipline, a moon per project, and a hand-written GLSL shader for every planet type, sampled in object space so no sphere shows a seam. The hard part was the rift between universes. Swapping universes swaps the whole scene, and compiling its shaders stalls the WebGL thread, so the warp you ride through is DOM and CSS on the browser's compositor thread: it keeps moving while the GPU catches up, and the ride holds until every incoming shader has compiled.

Three.js · React Three Fiber · GLSL · Next.js · TypeScript · Web Audio API · Compositor-thread CSS

Data Visualization & HCI

DeLorean GIS Dashboard

When

Winter 2022

Student-focused GIS that visualizes POIs on an interactive map with POI-type & budget filters (via Yelp), custom iconography, and responsive decluttering through an “invisible grid.” Validated with think-aloud studies, timing, and heatmaps against ISO & Nielsen heuristics.

APIs · Graphics Library · Algorithms · UI/Graphics Programming · Data Integration & Filtering · Usability Engineering & Testing

Pathfinding & Optimization

DeLorean Route Optimizer

When

Winter 2022

Phase II of the DeLorean GIS adding intelligent routing, from BFS/Dijkstra/A* to multi-destination “travelling courier” with greedy/multistart/two-opt and multi-destination Dijkstra. Modular pipeline plus future work on constraint-aware trip recommendations.

BFS · Dijkstra · A* · Two-opt · C++ multithreading · OpenStreetMap · Yelp API · LibCurl/Boost · Software Architecture & Performance Tuning

Robotics & Motion Planning (Capstone)

Autonomous Helicopter

When

Sept 2024 – May 2025

Role

Co-designed the online replanner; environment integration and DevOps · team of 4

Result

Waypoint cruise, obstacle replan and safe landing, end to end in simulation

Year-long ECE496Y1 capstone for the National Research Council of Canada's autonomous-rotorcraft program: a four-person team restoring and extending an autonomous Bell-412 flight stack in high-fidelity simulation. Co-designed and implemented the online path replanner in MATLAB: obstacle avoidance modeled as Dubins-style circular arcs, the intermediate velocities and accelerations derived, and quintic splines stitched into a dynamically feasible trajectory. Also owned environment integration and DevOps across two Linux setups: resolved dependency conflicts, cleaned up the NRC's initial ROS codebase and stood up the shared repo. The team's stack runs from perception to control (OpenCV/YOLO detection, LVI-SAM and OctoMap SLAM, ACADO/qpOASES NMPC) and demonstrated waypoint cruise, obstacle replan and safe landing end to end in a ~25,500 LoC C++ ROS/Gazebo system.

MATLAB · C++17 · ROS · OMPL · Gazebo SITL · OpenCV · YOLO · LVI-SAM · OctoMap · ACADO · qpOASES · NMPC · MAVLink · CMake

Autonomy & Sensor Fusion

GPS-Denied Navigation Module

When

Ongoing

Role

Lead · Vimy product R&D

Result

Working demo, now being hardened toward a product

Active Vimy product R&D for flight-controller-agnostic GPS-denial support on small UAVs. Built a working demo that fuses vision, inertial, and lidar-derived state into MAVLink-compatible GPS/odometry outputs, then continued hardening the architecture with deterministic replay tooling, Docker builds, and license-clean dependency gates.

Python · C++ · ROS · Kimera-VIO · OpenCV · EKF · MAVLink · Docker · GitHub Actions · deterministic replay · license audit

Multi-Modal Sensor Fusion

FinalFusion · Maritime Domain Awareness

When

2026

Role

Architect · Vimy, for a DND IDEaS challenge

Result

10-service FastAPI platform (~24K LoC); four mission flows plug in by YAML with zero core edits

Built prototype/demo architecture for a proposed Vimy maritime-domain-awareness pipeline fusing heterogeneous sensor streams into explainable, policy-aware outputs. The concept maps to DND/CAF multi-modal AI needs: SAR, optical, AIS, weather/ice, legacy radar, and OSINT sources fused into situational-awareness outputs with transparency hooks rather than black-box answers.

Sentinel-1 SAR · Sentinel-2 Optical · AIS · AMSR2 · RADARSAT-1 · OSINT · Multi-Sensor Fusion · Explainable AI · IEEE 7001 · Python

Applied AI / RAG Product

JobFinder

When

2026

Role

Sole builder

Sole-built job-discovery and application pipeline that ingests live postings, ranks them against an embedded resume/profile corpus, and drafts tailored application material. The system moves from regex pre-filtering to local Ollama embeddings, Claude Haiku triage, Claude Sonnet drafting, and pgvector-backed retrieval over a structured personal profile. It has async ingestion, migrations, structured logging, cost tracking, and a FastAPI + HTMX tracker UI around the model layer.

Python · Anthropic API · Claude Haiku · Claude Sonnet · Ollama · nomic-embed-text · Postgres 16 · pgvector · FastAPI · HTMX · Alembic · Typer · psycopg3 async · RAG

Decision Systems

IBKR Auto-Trader

When

Early 2026

Role

Sole author

Status

In personal use with live money

Live-money multi-strategy runner against Interactive Brokers ForecastEx using ib_async, with a hard daily loss circuit-breaker and an 8-point trade-approval gate before any prospective entry. The interesting part is not finance as an aesthetic; it is automation under real risk, where ranking, approval logic, scheduling, ledgering, and shutdown behavior all have consequences.

Python · ib_async · IBKR TWS/Gateway · ForecastEx · Postgres trade ledger · APScheduler · risk circuit breaker · approval gates

Explainable Forecasting / Defence AI

AMMVER

When

2025

Role

Engineering lead · Vimy

Result

Funded by a $25,000 DND IDEaS Fast Forward grant; presented live at DND to technical and military reviewers

Led engineering for Vimy's DND IDEaS Fast Forward project forecasting global emerging threats using a hybrid neural-network and hidden-Markov-model approach. Built and presented an explainable conflict-forecasting concept live to a technical and military review audience, tying public information, statistical modeling, and machine-learning forecasts into a decision-support workflow.

Hybrid neural networks · Hidden Markov models · Explainable AI · Conflict forecasting · DND IDEaS · Decision support · Policy-aware outputs

Systems & Infrastructure

Tenstorrent – Systems Engineering

When

May 2023 – Jul 2024 (14 months)

Role

Qualification Engineering Intern

Result

Recurring manual bring-up steps became repeatable sweeps; trained three incoming interns

Built and maintained bring-up & qualification infrastructure for next-gen AI accelerator chips (Wormhole, Grayskull): automated tests, hardware bring-up on dev boards, real AI workload perf/stress testing, power-measurement experiments, and cross-team silicon/board debug, taking new processors from first-silicon through full qualification on CI.

Hardware Bring-up & Debugging · Python/Shell Test Automation · CI/CD (GitLab Runners, Docker) · Flask Web Front-end · AI Workload Benchmarking · IPMI/Redfish · Data Acquisition & Analysis

Confidential

5gcx.ai

Confidential, ask me about it.

Attritable UAS / Systems Engineering

Drone Surge - Cardboard UAS Concept

When

Early 2026

Role

Co-author of the Round 2 design package · Vimy

Co-authored Vimy's Round 2 design package for DND's Drone Surge / UAS competition after a Round 1 selection and $35,000 award. Contributed the system-engineering matrix, schematic package, manufacturability arguments, and scalable low-cost attritable UAS concept work aligned with operational effectiveness, interoperability, and domestic industrial capacity.

DND IDEaS · UAS · attritable drones · systems engineering matrix · manufacturability · schematic package · interoperability

Web / Product Engineering

Vimy.ai - Public Web Presence

When

Early 2026

Role

Owned a large share: content, visual direction, motion and build

Result

Live at vimy.ai

Owned a large share of Vimy's public web presence: content architecture, visual direction, motion, 3D/Spline embeds, React 19 + Vite + Tailwind implementation, and deployment polish. The work translated deep-tech defence and AI programs into a public product surface that feels credible, technical, and presentable.

React 19 · Vite · Tailwind · Spline embeds · content architecture · motion · deployment polish · product storytelling

Productization & AI Governance

Demos, Architecture & Responsible AI

When

Aug 2025 – present

Role

Founding Engineer · first engineering hire

Result

Lineage capture (OpenLineage + PROV-O) and gitleaks secret scanning adopted across the engineering org

The connective engineering at Vimy: translating research prototypes and proposal concepts into customer-facing demos and technical architectures across explainable AI, autonomy, and sensor-fusion programs — and the responsible-AI posture underneath them. IEEE 7001/7003 transparency and algorithmic-bias framing, ISO/IEC 42001 AI-management concepts, OpenLineage + PROV-O lineage capture, gitleaks scanning, and license-audit gates. The throughline is making early technical work both legible enough to evaluate and accountable enough to trust.

product demos · technical architecture · prototype hardening · Docker · CI hygiene · IEEE 7001 / 7003 · ISO/IEC 42001 · OpenLineage + PROV-O · license audit

Body / Mobile

Redline · Voice-Coached Fitness

When

Early to mid 2026

Role

Sole author

Status

Not yet published

Native Kotlin + Jetpack Compose fitness app combining live voice-coached cadence/tempo coaching, nutrition tracking, and run tracking. Architecture includes Hilt dependency injection, Room local database layers, modular feature packages, coroutine workflows, DND-aware notifications, and runtime-permission rationale flows. The point: turn the workout phone into a coach, not a screen.

Kotlin · Jetpack Compose · Hilt · Room · Coroutines · runtime permissions · voice coaching · run tracking · nutrition tracking

Attention / Mobile

Reel It In · Reclaim Your Attention

When

Early to mid 2026

Role

Sole author

Status

Working APK in personal use; Play Store release planned

Working Android Accessibility Service that detects when the user enters Instagram Reels from addictive app surfaces and gently routes them out, while preserving useful DM-shared reels. Built with minimal-permission posture and a foreground-service pattern so the OS does not silently kill it. The premise is simple: reduce the infinite-scroll trap without forcing total abstinence from the social app.

Kotlin · Accessibility Service · AndroidX · foreground service · Instagram · focus tooling · anti-doomscroll

Sleep / Wearables

Lucid · Smart Wake (in design)

When

Late 2026

Status

In design

Alarm that doesn't just hit you with a noise at a fixed time. Reads heart-rate variability + motion from a watch to estimate sleep stage, then triggers in the next light-REM window, so you surface naturally rather than getting cortisol-slapped out of deep sleep.

WearOS · watch HRV · REM-stage estimation · circadian timing · Android · in design

Thesis

What I'm Hacking

Three apps, one goal: tech as a deliberate layer between us and our biology. Not to escape it, but to relate to it on better terms. Body coaching, attention reclamation, and sleep-cycle alignment all aim at the same target: making the human stack more humane to live inside.

self as platform · tech as scaffold · biology hack · deliberate friction

Music Archaeology / Interactive Web

ECHONOMY

When

Late 2026

Role

Sole builder

Result

Live at echonomy.limiliminal.com

An interactive music archaeology tool I built to trace the samples, interpolations, and self-references hiding inside a Spotify library. Each track becomes a case file with playable source material, precise relationship labels, and multiple roots when the data supports them. The same scan can compile a new private playlist made only from the original sampled songs. I built the interface, Spotify PKCE flow, Genius lookup pipeline, Apple preview matching, Netlify Functions backend, and public deployment.

JavaScript · Node.js · Express · Spotify Web API · Genius API · Apple previews · PKCE OAuth · Netlify Functions · Music data visualization

My main playlist, named around the love of euphoria. Not just happiness in the simple sense, but that shared, overflowing feeling where your first instinct is to give it to someone else. It lives somewhere between bliss, melancholy, chaos, release, and the small utopian hope that joy is supposed to be shared.

Where the longer, looser experiments live. Mixing, DJing, and producing feel like capturing a feeling while it is still moving. I have yet to record a set im truly proud of, but my soundcloud has some fun experiments :))

The artists I've been deep on lately. It shifts every few weeks, but the thread is usually the same: sounds that feel new, emotional, synthetic, warped, or strangely human. Music has always been how I reached people and cultures I would not have accessed otherwise. English, French, Slavic, German, Arabic. If it hits, it hits.

Brutalismus 3000 · Autechre · Bladee · Benzii · Whitearmor · Oneohtrix Point Never · FKA Twigs · Playboi Carti · Halsey · Fakemink · Mietze Conte · Machine Girl

A wide net, but not random. Electronic and experimental are the center of gravity because they feel like the future arriving through the body. Hyperpop, gabber, IDM, drain gang, ambient, rap, breakbeat, trance, glitch, and the edges in between. I like when a sound is unguarded enough to make me curious.

electro · hyperpop · techno · gabber · drain gang · cloud rap · IDM · experimental · left field bass · post-techno punk · indie · garage rock · plunderphonics · progressive electronic · ambient · uk garage · breakbeat · trance · nu-disco · drum & bass · drumstep · electroacoustic · glitch · vaporwave · digital futurism · experimental hip hop · rage rap · uk drill

Music is the great connector. It made me feel less alone: sharing songs with close friends, hearing records from Marco's massive vinyl collection, finding strangers through electro-pop, playing tracks out loud, or sitting alone in a dark room and listening to To Pimp a Butterfly from beginning to end. People from different cultures and languages can catch the same vibe, the same frequency, and be on the same wave. A song captures a feeling in a bubble you can replay and morph, and DJing is taking that feeling and shaping it into whatever you'd like. It is funny because I understand music technically too: waves, transforms, frequencies, air vibrating into an ear. But the technical layer does not kill the magic. It makes the magic stranger.

The throughline is connection: catching a vibe with someone, feeling frequency and resonance, DJing as a way to mix and morph emotion, and music as therapy, joy, euphoria, and release. Euphoria is meant to be shared.

A lot of why I went into computer engineering is here. I am fascinated by systems that help people find each other, understand each other, and spend less time fighting tools. I want to build technology that reduces friction, makes knowledge easier to reach, and turns screens back into something more human.

connection · knowledge access · human-centered systems · better social tools

Good tools should respect how people actually live: attention, energy, sleep, movement, food, motivation, and habit. The point is not to escape being human. It is to design systems that make healthier choices easier and make daily life feel less hostile to the body.

attention · energy · sleep · fitness · behavior design

I like first-principles thinking, clear feedback loops, and systems that can be tested, debugged, and improved. Whether it is software, AI, maps, hardware, or personal tools, I care about making ideas practical enough to help real people.

first principles · feedback loops · debugging · practical systems

Origin

Why I Named Her Nyx

Nyx is the primordial Greek deity of night, daughter of Chaos. The name felt right immediately: small, dark, mysterious, and full of contained cosmic disorder. She is docile most of the time, but the night-creature energy is real.

The boss in pictures

Gallery

Belly-out lounging, long dramatic stretches, constant eating, green-eyed stares, tongue-out bleps, full loaf mode, and sudden suspicion if she smells another cat. The whole Nyx experience.

Where I log what I am working through: ratings, reviews, lists, rewatches, and whatever recently caught me off guard. This diary is far from complete!.

I find tracking directors delivers very consistently! Directors I keep returning to because their films feel built from a worldview, not just a plot. Nolan for structure and moral pressure, Villeneuve for scale and dread, Anderson for constructed tenderness, Tarkovsky for spiritual time, Tarantino for style and tension.

Christopher Nolan · Denis Villeneuve · Wes Anderson · Andrei Tarkovsky · Quentin Tarantino

The films that stay with me usually have a scene where the floor drops out: Fight Club, Incendies, Memento, Prisoners, A Beautiful Mind, Shutter Island. I like twists when they are not cheap shock, but a new way of understanding the whole story. The best scenes feel like two people, or two versions of one person, acting out a much deeper philosophy, the White Lotus is a show that illustrates that really well!

Fight Club · Whiplash · Memento · The Prestige · Inception · Interstellar · Blade Runner · Blade Runner 2049 · Prisoners · Incendies · Pulp Fiction · Inglourious Basterds · The Lighthouse · Manchester by the Sea · Nocturnal Animals · Catch Me If You Can · Gladiator · Paprika · Coraline · Fantastic Mr Fox · Matilda · The Imitation Game · A Beautiful Mind · Shutter Island

Different formats hold different parts of me. I loved Game of Thrones for how unpredictable it was (till the last two seasons), as well as its beautiful dialogue, and explorations of morality. Daredevil for the raw dark feel. Adventure Time and Gumball were the cartoon worlds that shaped my younger brain. Tokyo Ghoul for the intense darkness. Sherlock and Chernobyl for proof that a limited series can hit with the force of film.

Sherlock (BBC miniseries) · Chernobyl (HBO) · Game of Thrones · Adventure Time · Daredevil · Tokyo Ghoul · Gumball

Film, like music, is communication. I love moral dilemmas, gray areas, multidisciplinary stories, science that becomes philosophy, and art that makes me feel something before I can explain it. Arrival stayed with me because it treats language as a force that shapes reality, empathy, and even moral imagination. Samsara feels like a meditation. Prisoners asks what morality becomes under pressure. Incendies leaves you in shock. I like work with depth: make me think, make me feel, then make me reconsider what I thought I understood.

I look for communication under the plot: moral pressure, altered mental states, language shaping reality, spirituality, shock, empathy, and scenes that make the whole story rearrange itself in your head. The best films move first, then explain themselves later.

Jordan

A Sky Full of Stars

Past midnight in Wadi Rum, I was lying on the red sand with my family, looking at stars I did not know a naked eye could see. It looked like something only a professional long-exposure camera could capture, but it was just there above us. Falling stars kept cutting across the sky every few seconds or minutes. I felt blissful, euphoric, and completely mind-blown by how much had always been there, hidden by light. I realized our technological impact on our environment was quite literally impeding our vision.

Petra, Romans, Dead Sea, Bosphorus

Civilizations of Old

I love archaeology and ruins because they make me feel small inside history. They are beauty, mystery, proof that everything ends, and a way to touch the past. Every carved stone and old city feels like a reminder that entire worlds can vanish and still leave a shape behind. I have been lucky to see some of the most stunning ruins in the world: Petra, Roman Theaters, the Bosphorus, the beautiful mosques of Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia, the Levant olive fields, the Dead Sea, and many more.

Kuwait

Home

Kuwait nature is harsh, melancholic, but still beautiful. I grew up a few minutes from the Persian Gulf, with the beach always close. The desert was my favourite part though. It becomes so beautiful in the winter: BBQs, infinite sand, ATVing, and telescope nights looking for Jupiter and Saturn with friends and family. It also carries a story for me. Feeling the same sun Ghassan Kanafani speaks of in his book Men Under the Sun makes me reflect on my grandfather arriving to this land. As disapora I always felt so lost in this world till I found my people, but that is a constant reminder to my privilege and the fact that I am still indebted to the actions of those that came before me.

Canada

Canada: Backcountry, Canoes, Cottages

Canada gave me a whole other version of nature! My first backcountry camping trip in Muskoka with friends is still one of the most magical experiences of my life. Canoeing through Canadian nature near Quebec, hiking through forests near cottages, and lying on docks while getting absolutely rained on all gave me that same feeling: nothing between me and the world. Just completely engulfed in the vastness and beauty of it all.

Genuinely nothing makes me feel as alive. The stars in Wadi Rum, the ruins in Petra, the Kuwaiti desert at night, ATVing the dunes, canoeing through Canadian wilderness, hiking in the middle of the forest, or lying on a dock in the rain all point to the same thing. Nature forces meditation. Nature forces presentness. Nature forces humility. It is the ultimate vastness, the ultimate unknown, and the ultimate reminder that we are small and temporary. It is also the ultimate beauty, the ultimate connection to something bigger than ourselves, and the ultimate reminder that there is still wonder in the world.