Zain Aamer
PhD Candidate
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolZain Aamer is a PhD candidate in Computer and Information Science at UPenn with eight years of software engineering and research experience spanning type theory, compilers, and formal verification. He blends hands-on systems work—contributing backend engine improvements to the well-known GZDoom project—with formal proofs of language properties, including information-flow soundness developed during a Max Planck visiting scholar stint. Comfortable writing multithreaded, performance-sensitive code for trading systems and building verified data-structure proofs, he regularly moves between applied engineering and mechanized theorem proving. Zain’s background in mathematics and psychology (both 4.0 GPAs) underpins a rigorous, human-centered approach to program correctness and security type systems. Notably, he has taught large undergraduate courses and led quant trading teams, demonstrating an uncommon mix of pedagogy, research depth, and production engineering.
8 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics and Psychology, 4.0/4.0, Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics and Psychology, 4.0/4.0 at University of Illinois at ChicagoDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer and Information Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania
English
Github Skills (8)
c-language10
game-development10
cprogramming-language10
game-engine10
event-handling10
game-dev10
configuration-management9
zscript8
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
ZDoom/gzdoom
Mar 2018 - Aug 2019
GZDoom is a feature centric port for all Doom engine games, based on ZDoom, adding an OpenGL renderer and powerful scripting capabilities
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:6 commits, 14 PRs, 24 comments in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Zain contributed to the GZDoom project by implementing and modifying core engine functionalities. The user's work includes adding features such as event handling capabilities and modifying existing code in files related to configuration management. The user also updated the game's event system and exposed all of the classes. This demonstrates a deep understanding of the game engine's internal workings.
scriptinggameszdoomgame-developmentrenderer
ZippeyKeys12/clematis
Aug 2018 - Aug 2019
ZScript unit test framework for GZDoom | Used in https://github.com/ZippeyKeys12/rogzis
Contributions:2 releases, 37 commits, 1 PR in 1 year
v8-javascript-enginetestingzscripttest-frameworkunit
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