Powertrain Captain, UCD Formula Student · Dublin, Ireland
I lead the powertrain division of UCD Formula Student, writing the embedded C++ that runs our electric race car. Final-year Computer Science (Data Science & AI) at UCD; previously a software engineer intern at Twilio. I build things that have to work.
I'm Powertrain Captain at UCD Formula Student, where I lead the software side of our electric race car: the vehicle control unit, the battery management system, and the CAN network that ties them together. The intersection of software and physical systems is where I'm most at home.
Across the 2026 season I moved our VCU onto the Teensy 4.1 platform, wrote an STM32 battery management stack with a full simulation harness so it could be validated before a single board was flashed, and built the internal tools site the team now runs on. We took E135 to FSUK 2026 at Silverstone and finished 29th overall as the top Republic of Ireland team, clearing five scrutineering stickers — four of them a first for UCD.
Alongside that I'm a final-year Computer Science (Data Science & AI) student at UCD, holding a 4.04 / 4.20 GPA, First Class Honours. I spent the summer of 2025 as a Software Engineer Intern at Twilio in Dublin, working on high-throughput APNs messaging infrastructure in Java.
Dublin, Ireland
Dublin / Remote
apns-http2 library, reducing network errors and operational overhead.Built a full-stack AI study platform for Irish Leaving Cert students, using Firebase and LLM APIs to generate curriculum-specific practice questions and flashcards.
Bar and floor operations balanced alongside a demanding academic schedule, maintaining First Class Honours throughout via disciplined time management.
Vehicle control unit firmware for E135, the UCDFS electric race car designed and built for the 2026 season. Rebuilt on the Teensy 4.1: pedal and brake plausibility, Bamocar D3 motor control, BMS integration, logging, and a Nextion HMI dashboard.
View on GitHubBattery management firmware for an STM32F303VC: LTC6812 isoSPI cell monitoring, fault and balancing logic, a 32 KB bootloader, and a Python desktop tool. A fake-target simulator lets the whole stack be validated before any board is flashed.
View on GitHubThe site UCD Formula Student runs on: attendance, competition planning, the team directory, and a canvas editor that replaced Canva for powertrain flowcharts. Role-based auth over Postgres row-level security, containerised with tiered dev/stage/prod deploys.
View on GitHub
Processed 56.7 million rows across 2,000 CSV files (2.7 GB) to benchmark distributed MapReduce processing against traditional SQL on historical stock data.
View on GitHub
Interactive analytics dashboard exploring ~20,000 chess games. Seven visualisations surfacing patterns in opening strategy, skill tiers, and time controls.
View on GitHub
Automated ML pipeline predicting optimal F1 Fantasy teams each race week. LightGBM model, PuLP knapsack optimiser, and GitHub Actions publishing weekly reports.
View on GitHub
Open-source contribution to CleverTap's production push notification library, extending builder support for the full APNS payload spec with comprehensive unit tests.
View Pull Request
Full-stack AI study platform for Irish Leaving Certificate students. Generates curriculum-specific practice questions and flashcards via LLM integration.
View LiveA macOS clipboard watcher that answers you in place. Copy anything prefixed with ?? and it queries Gemini with recent context, then writes the answer straight back to your clipboard.
St. Raphael's Garda Credit Union
One of 3 finalists selected for academic excellence and community contribution. Award: MacBook Air and annual educational bursary.
University College Dublin
Awarded to incoming students with the highest academic results from their secondary school.
Open to opportunities, collaborations, and good conversations. Just send me an email.
shane.whelan2@ucdconnect.ie