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vortexisalpha/README.md

Joshua Hirschkorn

Computer Engineering student at Imperial College London building low-latency systems, FPGA accelerators, compilers, ML infrastructure, and production software.

I like projects where performance, correctness, and real-world constraints all matter: hardware/software co-design, trading systems, compiler backends, computer vision pipelines, and tools that make engineering teams faster.

Portfolio | GitHub | LinkedIn

Open Source and Team Contributions

I have contributed to multi-author and organization repositories across systems programming, compilers, networking, FPGA acceleration, and low-latency engineering. I try to make the contribution trail explicit: repo links, commit-history links, contributor counts, and the engineering areas I owned.

Project Role Stack Evidence
Quick-Mafs/Magnetic-Pendulum-Accelerator Top contributor SystemVerilog, AXI-DMA, Python, Unity/C# Public team FPGA accelerator; implemented pipelined fixed-point compute, binary TCP streaming, and visualization tooling
Information-Processing/trading_indicators Team lead / contributor FPGA, Python, PYNQ, C++ Public team low-latency trading system using FPGA acceleration and live order book data
langproc-lab Contributor C++, RISC-V, compiler design 38 commits in a 7-contributor compiler repository
Multithreaded-Chat-Application Top contributor C, sockets, multithreading 130 commits out of 152 total commits
Lab3-FSM Contributor Digital systems, FSM design Multi-contributor hardware/systems repository

If a repository is public, I prefer linking directly to the commit history or contribution surface rather than only listing the project name. That makes it easier to verify what I built and where I contributed.

Contribution Areas

  • FPGA acceleration: fixed-point pipelines, DSP utilization, AXI-DMA transfer paths, binary TCP streaming, and performance benchmarking.
  • Compiler infrastructure: parser and AST design, semantic analysis, type checking, optimization passes, RISC-V code generation, Dockerized testing, and CI.
  • Low-latency systems: order book processing, multithreaded networking, socket protocols, synchronization, and real-time feature pipelines.
  • ML systems: evaluation pipelines, pose-estimation benchmarking, embeddings, clustering, and feedback loops for model improvement.

Featured Engineering Work

Pipelined Fixed-Point FPGA Compute Engine

Built a 12-lane Q4.14 FPGA accelerator with 21-stage pipelines, using 98.2% of DSP resources at an overclocked 110 MHz.

  • Public team repository: Quick-Mafs/Magnetic-Pendulum-Accelerator
  • Cut runtime from 61,878 seconds to 7.10 seconds, an 8,715x speedup.
  • Reduced energy use by roughly 3,100x compared with the CPU baseline.
  • Replaced Flask transfer with AXI-DMA and a custom binary TCP path, reducing frame transfer latency from 1 us/byte to 42 ns/byte.
  • Built a Unity/C# visualization client for streamed FPGA frames, live parameter control, and trajectory playback.

Real-Time FPGA-Accelerated Crypto Trading System

Led a team building a low-latency trading system using PYNQ-Z1 FPGAs and live Binance order book data.

  • Public team repository: Information-Processing/trading_indicators
  • Engineered a feature pipeline using 17 order book microstructure signals for 2-second price prediction.
  • Implemented online learning through incremental outer-product updates on FPGA.
  • Achieved around 18x average speedup, 68x peak speedup, and 57.6% live directional accuracy.
  • Focused on the full path from market data ingestion to hardware acceleration and live decisioning.

High-Performance C90 Compiler

Built a full C90 compiler in C++ with parsing, AST construction, semantic analysis, optimization, and RISC-V code generation.

  • Implemented constant folding, dead code elimination, branch resolution, and full type checking.
  • Validated correctness with a Dockerized CMake/Python testbench over 300+ C programs.
  • Maintained 100% pass rate through on-push GitHub Actions CI.
  • Used polymorphic ASTs, RAII smart pointers, std::variant typing, template dispatch, and dynamic-cast based code generation.

LLM Embeddings-Based Misinformation Detection Pipeline

Built an LLM-assisted misinformation detection and clustering system for YouTube transcripts.

  • Extracted transcript claims and fact-checked them using GPT-4, Google Custom Search API, and Wikipedia API.
  • Implemented embeddings plus KMeans clustering to group related claims.
  • Built a Flask API, TypeScript/React frontend, and Chrome extension.
  • Visualized claim clusters in a React Flow interface.

Selected Public Repositories

Repository Stack Notes
Data-Structures-and-Algorithms Python 500+ commits across algorithms and problem-solving practice
polymarket-kalshi-interexchange-arb Python Prediction-market arbitrage research and financial data tooling
Custom-ML-Library C++ Machine learning primitives implemented from scratch
expert-finder Python, Flask, JavaScript Full-stack app integrating Google APIs and LLM-powered search
LLM-Embeddings-Based-Misinformation-Detection-Pipeline Python, Flask, TypeScript, React Claim extraction, fact-checking, embeddings, and clustering

Production Experience

  • Incoming Quantitative Developer Intern at Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Group.
  • Aladdin Engineering Spring Intern at BlackRock, selected as 1 of 12 from 11,500+ applicants and ranked 1st in the technical coding challenge.
  • Technology Spring Intern at Morgan Stanley, ranked 1st/15 in an algorithmic trading challenge.
  • Computer Vision and ML Systems Intern at Magic AI, building evaluation pipelines and low-latency multi-camera pose estimation systems.
  • Technology Spring Intern at Amazon AWS, deploying Flask services on EC2 with REST APIs, security groups, and CloudWatch.
  • Software Engineer Intern at Yorlet, building TypeScript and distributed notification systems for 11K+ users.

Technical Focus

  • Low-latency systems: C, C++, Python, multithreading, sockets, performance profiling.
  • Hardware acceleration: SystemVerilog, FPGA pipelines, AXI-DMA, fixed-point compute.
  • Compilers: parsing, ASTs, semantic analysis, optimization, RISC-V code generation.
  • AI and ML systems: PyTorch, TensorFlow, OpenCV, MediaPipe, embeddings, clustering, model evaluation.
  • Full-stack tooling: TypeScript, React, Flask, FastAPI, Node.js, MongoDB, Docker, Kubernetes.

Current Interests

  • Hardware/software co-design for real-time systems.
  • Low-latency trading infrastructure and market microstructure.
  • Compiler optimization and language tooling.
  • Evaluation systems for ML, computer vision, and LLM applications.
  • Engineering tools that reduce review time, improve feedback loops, and make teams faster.

Pinned Loading

  1. Information-Processing/trading_indicators Information-Processing/trading_indicators Public

    Python 6 2

  2. sunyxedu/AI_Fact_Checker sunyxedu/AI_Fact_Checker Public

    Python 2

  3. Information-Processing/chat-bot Information-Processing/chat-bot Public

    OpenSCAD 3

  4. Information-Processing/Team-9 Information-Processing/Team-9 Public

    Jupyter Notebook 3

  5. Quick-Mafs/Magnetic-Pendulum-Accelerator Quick-Mafs/Magnetic-Pendulum-Accelerator Public

    VHDL 7 2

  6. chandansgowda/engineering-in-kannada chandansgowda/engineering-in-kannada Public

    A platform for learning engineering concepts in Kannada through YouTube playlists from Engineering in Kannada.

    TypeScript 77 25