Hi. My name is Wyatt McCarthy and I'm currently a student at Amherst College in the class of 2024. I am a Computer Science major with extensive coursework in Economics and Math. At Amherst, I am a member of the men's varsity soccer team. I have played soccer since I was a toddler and probably committed more time to playing than any other activity in my life. In highschool I played in the Development Academy where I spent time with Metropolitan Oval and NYCFC.

In my coursework at Amherst College, I have focused largely on computer science, economics, and math. Throughout, I have completed several courses relevant to software engineering, quantitative problem-solving, and data analysis including data structures, algorithms, artificial intelligence, microeconomics, macroeconomics, industrial organization, linear algebra, computer systems, algorithm visualization, databases, and networks. I have also worked on several personal projects that have given me practical experience in developing and implementing software solutions. In particular, I have advanced experience programming in Java, Python and JavaScript, as well as experience with HTML, CSS, React, and C. I have used these skills to develop projects such as a pathfinding algorithm visualizer, a checkers game with a minimax AI that plays against the user, a sports analytics interface for Amherst athletes, a personal website and more. Most recently, I sharpened my skillset during Spring of 2024 working as a research assistant in Regina Barzilay's group at MIT.

In the medium term, I hope to use the education I've recieved at Amherst alongside a passion I've gained for coding to become a software engineer. In the long run, I hope to somehow align my interest in programming with my passions for fitness, sport and entrepreneurship.

Projects

Graham Scan Visualizer

A program to visualize the finding of convex hulls via the Graham scan algorithm; allows user to place points manually or randomly and visualize various steps of the algorithm.

Checkers AI

A checkers game that supports 2 player or 1 player use. The CPU opponent uses the minimax or expectiminimax algorithms. I spent extensive time optimizing the minimax algorithm using various techniques such as alpha-beta pruning and transposition tables.

Pathfinding Visualizer

My pathfinding visualizer supports breadth-first search, depth-first search, Dijkstra’s algorithm, and A* search; users can run these algorithms on variations of the initial grids, which can be modified by adding walls and weighting nodes.

Gemini API Chrome Extension

Chatbot leveraging Google's Gemini API meant to be used as a chrome extension; in early stage right now and only consists of basic interface to prompt and chat with Gemini.

Amherst Athletics Data Interface

Full-stack PERN (postgres, express, node, react) app built to interact with and visualize data collected on Amherst College athletes.