About

Student & Software Developer

Hello! I'm Chaira (ich heiße Chaira/ฉันชื่อชายร่า) and I'm a software developer based in the greater New York City area. I hold a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Smith College.

Having grown up internationally, I am driven by and committed to developing technology and businesses that both uplift communities and bridge cultural divide through greater connectivity.

Outside of tech, I am an enthusiastic athlete and love all things sports, music, food, and travel.


  • Located: New York City
  • Email: chairachananharder@gmail.com

Skills

C++/C 100%
Java 100%
Firebase 100%
Python 100%
Swift 90%
SQL100%

Interests

Entrepreneurship

Autonomous Systems

Renewable Energy Systems

Computational Finance

Space Robotics Tech

Human-Computer Interaction

Frictionless Engineering

Systems Simplification

Resume

Download my resume here!

Experience

OpenAI GPT-5 Startup Hackathon - Founder & Finalist

Built Asaply, an AI checkout engine, placing Top 6 of 300 engineers at OpenAI's GPT-5 Hackathon in NYC.

UBS × Anthropic AI FinTech Hackathon — Top 6 Finalist

Created ValueSpotter, a computer vision app for M&A firms that estimates valuations from videos or images using reverse image search; significantly reduced manual appraisal time. Team of 4.

VEX Robotics

Lead programmer for the 1st place team at the Vietnam National Robotics Tournament, Ho Chi Minh City (Jan 2020).

AI4ALL

Selected scholar in the Natural Language Processing track of Stanford × Simon Fraser University's AI4ALL program (Summer 2020).

Xd Hacks Vancouver

3rd Place at Xd Hacks Mini Vancouver (Jan 2021) for developing a cybersecurity detection and recommendation tool that evaluated users' online security practices (team of 5).

Education

Bachelors: Computer Science

2021-2025

Smith College, Northampton, MA

Undergraduate studies in computer science with a focus in entrepreneurship and finance.

Awards & Accomplishments:

Grade 12

2020-2021

Kelowna Secondary School, Kelowna, BC, Canada

Awards & Accomplishments:

  • Graduated high school at École Kelowna Secondaire.
  • Led Rotary Club fundraising for Hagar International.
  • Recipient of the COBS Kelowna Pride Society scholarship.

Grade 10 & 11

2018-2020

Concordia International School, Hanoi, Vietnam

Awards & Accomplishments:

  • Honor Roll with Distinction (2019, 2020)
  • Vietnam National VEX Robotics Championship Winner
  • Vietnam National VEX Robotics - Design Award
  • Female Athlete of the Year (2019)
  • Varsity Basketball MVP (2019)
  • XC Coach's Award (2020)
  • Varsity Volleyball Coach's Award (2020)

Service

United Nations International School NYC — Pathways Project

New York, NY

Built an AI learning layer built on top of Google's NotebookLM, developed in collaboration with Google engineers to empower girls in West Africa. Led full-stack development using Firebase, integrating real-time dashboards, playlists, and adaptive learning flows.

Tech Lab Assistant

2023 - 2024

Northampton, MA

Worked as a Campus School Tech Lab Assistant, facilitating activities and helping children K-6 learn how to code through various technologies (Scratch, SPIKE Prime, Spheros, FIRST Robotics, Makey-Makey, etc.)

Encode Justice

2020 - 2021

encodejustice.ca

Started and co-lead the Canada Chapter of Encode Justice, where we focused on advocacy, education, and policy around algorithmic bias in Canada. Previously worked with parent organization Encode Justice.

STEAM Outreach Team: Robotics Member

2021 - 2022

Western Massachusetts

Member of the Robotics Outreach Team through the Jandon Center for Community Engagement at Smith College, where we worked with K-12 children at schools and other organizations to learn STEAM skills such as robotics through sets such as Lego Mindstorms.

Concordia Summer School Teacher's Aide

June 2020

Concordia International School, Hanoi, Vietnam

Volunteer teacher's aide for Concordia International School elementary school program during the pandemic.

Tennis Coach

2017 - 2020

Chiang Mai, Thailand & Hanoi, Vietnam

Coached tennis to children aged 5-11. Paid and unpaid opportunities.

Hanoi Homie: Helping Hanoi's Houseless

August 2018 - June 2020

Hanoi, Vietnam

I am deeply passionate about supporting houseless people and in 2018 launched Hanoi Homie (hanoihomie.com) , a guide to local resources for houseless individuals in Hanoi.

Tutoring Children

2017 - 2019

Chiang Mai, Thailand & Hanoi, Vietnam

Tutored non-native English-speaking students English and math.

Portfolio

Related Projects

Click on a project to view its code repo!

  • All
  • AI/ML
  • iOS
  • Web
  • Data
  • Other fun!

Wohna iOS

A women-centered housing and subleasing platform built in Swift. Functional search and filtering.

Gitsta

Network calls mini project with iOS dev and Git's REST API

Auxy

In-the-works AI-powered DJ that remixes royalty-free tracks live.

Chai's Bias

SwiftUI news aggregator that uses the News API to fetch and display articles.

War Card Game Project

iOS app implementation of the War Card Game from 2019.

Minimax Algorithm ChessBot

Command-line chess bot that uses the Minimax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning to determine optimal moves.

queery

Mini Search Engine demonstrating Singular Value Decomposition in MATLAB

Python Portscanner

Python port scanner that detects open and closed ports on a target IP using multiple scanning modes (normal, SYN, FIN) and supports ordered or randomized port scanning.

Pyx Boxing

Re-Engineering boxing equipment for women. Site developed by myself using Astro and Netlify.

Slick Flights.

Java console game to find the cheapest flight route between airports. HashMap and DSA-focused project.

Bikesia (Valetbike)

A mock bike share system in the Western Massachusetts valley built with Ruby on Rails.

Winegorithm

A Python NLP project that suggests food and wine pairings. Current version classifies wine based on descriptors.

Hanoi Homie

Find communities and resources to help the houseless in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Homemade Binary Clock

Who wouldn't want to read the time in binary?

Nutriest

A nutritional estimation model using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Open notebook file in Google Colab.

Holyoke Dinosaur Footprints

Discovering and documenting the history of dinosaur footprints in Holyoke, MA for a Smith College landscape studies project.

$pending Wrapped

A personal finance SQL analysis project.

Recursive Maze Solver

Visually solving various mazes recursively in Java!

Image Manipulation in MATLAB

Matrix transformations and custom functions to apply grayscale, sepia, hue rotation, and blur effects to an image, exploring fundamental concepts in image processing.

Cachebite

iOS on-campus delivery project at Smith College

FSA AI Word Generator

FSA (Finite State Automata) Word Generator for CSC 290: Artificial Intelligence

Contact

Contact Me

Send me an email! I respond within 24 hours. Phone number on resume (download from Home page).

harderchaira@gmail.com || chairachananharder@gmail.com

Social Profiles