~ $ git log --deploys
CommitDeploymentDate
3f9a1c2bonbon/front-end-intern2024-05
a71e0d4medicine/ml-research-eng2026-01
c4b28e9adaptron/ai-research-eng2026-05
e81f5b7pointclickcare/process-engqueued
~ $ kubectl describe node a.gaffen
Nodea.gaffen
RoleAI Researcher
SchoolMcMaster
Year4th · CS
RegionHamilton, ON
StatusHealthy
Shellzsh

Alex Gaffen

CS @ McMaster UniversityAI Research Engineer @ Adaptron Inc

Experience

Work & Education

PointClickCare
Mississauga, ON
Process Engineer · 4-month co-op
  • Will work on site reliability for PointClickCare’s cloud health-record platform, the leading platform for long-term and post-acute care across North America.
  • Will troubleshoot incidents that affect the platform’s availability and trace them to their root causes.
  • Will automate manual processes and streamline workflows to cut operational toil.
  • Will work with software engineering, SRE, architecture and SaaS operations teams on Azure, Kubernetes and CI/CD.
Incoming
Adaptron Inc
Ottawa, ON
AI Research Engineer · 8-month co-op
  • Researching and developing an interpretable cognitive architecture in Python for autonomous robot control, world models, and combining supervised and unsupervised learning.
  • Building modular, tested components in a Git-based, multi-contributor codebase through code reviews and planning.
  • Now building the attention and proprioception systems, weighting signals by where on the body they originate to avoid combinatorial overload as sensor inputs grow.
May 2026 – PresentCurrent
McMaster Department of Medicine
Hamilton, ON
Biomedical ML Research Engineer
  • First author on a manuscript in preparation for an AI clinical tool: a patch-based medical imaging pipeline with VGG16 feature extraction and FCM clustering that quantifies and stages liver fibrosis.
  • Engineered a rate-of-change descent thresholding algorithm with automated brightness normalization, halving the margin of error on fibrosis quantification, plus a human-in-the-loop editor for pathologists.
  • Met the pathologists who use the tool in their lab, gathered feedback and shipped their changes.
Jan 2026 – May 2026
Bonbon Technologies
Los Angeles, CA · Remote
Front End Developer Intern
  • Collaborated with a cross-functional team to build and deploy web components in Svelte, reporting to the CTO.
May 2024 – Jul 2024
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON
Honours Computer Science Co-op (B.A.Sc.)
  • 4th year. Dean’s Honour List (2023).
  • Violinist in the McMaster Symphony Orchestra (Sept 2022 – Apr 2026): four-year member with Level 10 RCM Violin, and mentor to students at OrKidstra.
2022 – PresentEducation

Projects

Selected Work

01
React · Node · C++ · Docker
Mock Market

Full-stack investing practice site: Google auth, live stock data, and a C++ analysis service for trading signals.

Read the build →
02
Mobile app · In development
Rally

Pickup games, study sessions and jam nights near you, on one map. Show up for something, leave with a crew.

rallynow.ca ↗
03
Python · VGG16 · FCM · React
Liver Fibrosis Staging

Patch-based imaging pipeline that quantifies and stages liver fibrosis, with a human-in-the-loop editor for pathologists. Manuscript in preparation.

Alex Gaffen

Hey! I’m a 4th year CS student at McMaster, obsessed with engineering problems that don’t have clean answers, in the overlap of medical AI, robotics and systems security.

I like understanding how things work deeply, optimizing them with creative solutions, and figuring out how they break. Right now that means interpretable cognitive architectures for robots at Adaptron, after building biomedical ML for liver fibrosis staging.

Away from the keyboard: soccer, novels, violin in the McMaster Symphony Orchestra, and hunting for new music genres.

Honours & Awards

Recognition

$13,800
Polytechnique Montréal · 2026

Undergraduate Summer Internship Award (Offer)

To research AI in cybersecurity under Prof. N. Boulahia-Cuppens.

326applicants
36universities
1selected
$3,000
McMaster University · 2022

Award of Excellence

2023
McMaster University

Dean’s Honour List

Coursework

Top Marks

A+COMPSCI 3TB3Syntax-Based Tools & Compilers
A+COMPSCI 2XC3Algorithms and Software Design
A+COMPSCI 1XC3Development Basics
ACOMPSCI 1MD3Introduction to Programming
ACOMPSCI 1DM3Discrete Math for Computer Science
ASTATS 2D03Intro to Probability
AMATH 1ZA3Engineering Mathematics I
A-COMPSCI 4SD3Data-Driven Algorithms for Sequential Decision Making
A-COMPSCI 3S03Software Testing
A-COMPSCI 4CR3Applied Cryptography
A-COMPSCI 3MI3Principles of Programming Languages
A-COMPSCI 3SH3Operating Systems
A-COMPSCI 2GA3Computer Architecture
A-COMPSCI 1XD3Intro to Software Using Web Programming
A-MATH 1ZB3Engineering Mathematics II-A
A-MATH 1B03Linear Algebra 1

Technical Skills

Toolkit

Python
ML · research
Used at
  • Adaptron
  • Dept. of Medicine
Computer Vision
VGG16 · clustering
Used at
  • Dept. of Medicine
Cognitive Architectures
World models · robotics
Used at
  • Adaptron
React / JavaScript
Frontend
Used at
  • Dept. of Medicine
  • Mock Market
Svelte
Web components
Used at
  • Bonbon
C / C++
Systems
Used at
  • Mock Market
  • Coursework
Docker
Containers
Used at
  • Mock Market
Git & Code Review
Collaboration
Used at
  • Adaptron
  • Bonbon

Photography

Through My Lens

Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate BridgeSan Francisco
01 / 12

Contact

Let’s build.

Emailalexgaffen@gmail.com
LinkedInin/alexgaffen↗
GitHub@alexgaffen↗
X@alex_gaffen↗