About Me

I'm Jace Kasen, a Computer Science student at UCLA with a minor in Anthropology, graduating in June 2026. I was born and raised in Almaty, Kazakhstan, went to high school at Concord College in rural England (surrounded by sheep and green hills), and now I'm in Westwood, Los Angeles, surrounded by cars and highways. I'm currently looking for software engineering and machine learning internships or full-time roles.

My brain finds tinkering with things until they are just right extremely satisfying, so machine learning really has captured my fascination. I'm also obsessive about organization and systems. I've been like this as long as I can remember, there isn't much in this life that couldn't do with a better system. I have a strong desire to make software that's clean and maintainable down to every last detail.

I added the Anthropology minor after taking a linguistic anthropology class that made me notice how much subconscious calculation goes into everyday speech. We're constantly making choices about how to say things based on context and what we're trying to signal, and we don't even realize we're doing it. Once I started noticing it, I kept thinking about it, so I took more classes.

Outside of academics, I'm into competitive Counter-Strike 2 and NBA basketball. I follow both closely through data and analysis rather than traditional viewing (HLTV and Basketball Reference are frequently open on my browser). I listen to podcasts like Thinking Basketball and The Bill Simmons Show to keep up with the NBA. On this site, you'll find projects where I explore datasets from both areas, combining my interest in sports with my technical skills.