
Edwin Shen is a senior majoring in Math & Computer Science. He has spent two semesters as an ATLAS intern, having heard about the program through his academic advisor. He decided to join the program because he was eager to apply his classroom learning in a real-world setting, specifically regarding the intersection between cutting-edge AI technologies and business services. Edwin felt that he was a great fit with ATLAS’s focus on hands-on projects with campus units, with a perfect blend of technical challenges and professional exposure. Edwin is a Developer intern in the ATLAS AI/Machine Learning Team, and works on the UIUC Business & Finance (BF) website. He is responsible for the development of a retrieval-augmented generation system utilizing the University Large Language Model, as well as the design and implementation of a React-based frontend with Tailwind CSS that interfaces with the Flask/Node backend, enabling staff to upload documents and pose queries. Edwin is also tasked with developing automated evaluation pipelines, utilizing custom prompts and evaluator-optimizer loops to benchmark response accuracy and retrieval latency. He has tuned embedding parameters to improve relevance. During his ATLAS internship, Edwin developed his technical skills in Large-Language Model orchestration with LangChain similarity search, utilizing FAISS for Full-Stack integration and automated evaluation pipelines with custom metrics. He also gained collaboration, time management, and communication skills. During his experiences, Edwin has learned the importance of receiving feedback early to identify and correct misunderstandings before investing too much time in a solution. In the future, he plans to pursue a career as an ML engineer or applied AI researcher. In his free time, Edwin enjoys playing the French horn and has been in his university’s brass ensemble since his freshman year.