# Leon Zha > AI Software Engineer @ SoundHound Location: Cupertino, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/leonzha My Education: I attended the University of Southern California from 2019-2023, graduating Summa Cum Laude with degrees in Computer Science (M.S.), Quantitative Biology (B.S.), and minors in Computer Science and Applied Analytics. My Journey: Although I went into college wanting to go into biological research and academia, I came to realize that it was my computer science courses that held more interest to me. I still find the field of biology interesting so I elected to keep my Quantitative Biology major, which, standing at the intersection of math, computer science, and biology, has considerable overlap with computer science. Thanks to my minors, I've taken many of the core CS courses, including data structures, algorithms, systems, OS, etc. I've also gained interest in the enormous power behind data science and machine learning, having supplemented my interest through courses such as DSCI 552: Machine Learning for Data Scientists, CSCI 499: Natural Language Processing, and CSCI 566: Deep Learning. ## Work Experience ### ML Software Enginner @ SoundHound AI Jan 2024 – Present ### Data Engineer @ Chevron Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | Houston, Texas, United States - Created a pipeline to leverage new data from Microsoft SQL Server to track water levels at drilling sites for removal, contributing to savings of $90,000 per site per week, in an Agile based work environment - Designed and implemented an incremental delta load approach to updating data writes for the core and atomic tables in Chevron's Digital Twins project. ### Voice AI Software Development Intern @ SoundHound Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | Santa Clara, California, United States - Matured SoundHound's Restaurant Ordering product by strengthening its Natural Language Understanding (NLU), intent processing, and response generation - Implemented novel features critical to up-scaling deployment such as menu location availability, which has been a highly sought after feature due to its usefulness for chain restaurants - Led the integration of an important client into SoundHound’s internal environment by coordinating across departments, delegating priority tasks, and writing scripts to ingest the client’s information - Coded in C++, Python, and SoundHound’s custom Terrier language - Contributed directly to code in production ### Co-Executive Director @ USC APASA Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 - Lead of the largest programming assembly in USC, representing 20% of USC's undergraduate population and spanning over 26 member organizations - Managed an executive board of 21 board members and 14 interns, involving weekly meetings, 1:1s, and planning committees - Spearheaded large, campus-wide events such as Cultural Art Expo, the Community Engagement Project, and Night Market that drew in hundreds of participants to raise awareness for advocacy, representation, and diversity - Contributed to the writing of official USG and APASA statements that reached the desk of USC's President Carol Folt - Advocated for increased funding and resources for student groups on campus ### Co-Advocacy Chair @ USC APASA Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Launched summer initiatives in response to COVID-19 xenophobia and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement such as APASA's recognition of Juneteenth - Directed APASA's Civic Engagement Event to highlight how the Model Minority Myth differently affects various APIDA communities. Successfully pitched a partnership with the USC Pacific Asia Museum (PAM) to showcase individual stories from the USC community. - Partnered with UCLA's APC to create a joint campaign that encourages voting and other forms of civic engagement ### Intern @ USC APASA Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 - Brainstormed and brought to life APASA's annual Holiday Party General Assembly meeting with the other interns - Set up groundwork for APASA events such as Night Market, Cultural Art Expo, and Extravaganza, and reconfigured rooms for the General Assembly meetings ### EH MATTERS Research Internship @ Keck Medicine of USC Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 - Conducted research and data analysis on the chemical makeup of particulate matter. - Investigated the makeup of PM2.5 in the downtown LA region using time-rich data harvested from the EPA's AirData Air Quality Monitor and JMP statistical software - Created custom state-wide visualizations of various pollutants such as PM2.5, Ozone, and Wildfire Smoke to understand health disparities in communities across temporal and spatial axes using Python ### Breast and Colorectal Cancer Gene Expression Analyst @ USC Department of Biological Sciences Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 - Learned the biological and technical foundations to continue computational research, especially multi-omic data analysis using public databases (such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC)) and cluster computing (including USC's Discovery Condo Cluster Program). ### Provost's Research Fellowship - Tower Lab @ USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Cupertino, California, United States - Designed an experimental pipeline to scan over 300 hours of video and automatically identify the frequency and temporal density of abnormal Drosophila behavior near death ### Research Assistant - Tower Lab @ USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 - Increased laboratory efficiency by writing scripts to classify over 8,800 files that were previously sorted by hand - Maintained Drosophila stocks, prepared chemicals and equipment for experiments, and created Drosophila food - Visualized data collected from investigating the effects of Methoprene, Doxycycline, and Mifepristone on the lifespan on Drosophila ### Undergraduate Researcher - Levine Lab @ USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Collated an set of independent scripts in a pipeline to characterize large annotated genomic datasets based on their metabolic potential and refined them into an easily distributed package for other researchers ### Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship - Tower Lab @ USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 - Employed a hands-on approach to review existing neural network models such as DeepLabCut - Exposed old data as corrupted by comparing it to newly generated data - Visually identified and scored the erratic movement of Drosophila as they age ### President @ USC Biology Club Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 - Revamped and added core club events, including live science experiments, resume and research workshops, and virtual lab tours ### Event Coordinator @ USC Biology Club Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Increased member involvement by organizing events such as guest speakers and a free trip to the LA Zoo - Raised mental health awareness and brought in club funding through the USC Office of Health Promotion Strategy to integrate mental wellness procedures ### Diversity and Inclusion Steering Committee @ Society 53 Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Identified and removed obstacles preventing low-income members of the USC community from applying to the USC Student Alumni Society ### Operations Lead - SCupper Committee @ Society 53 Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Writing code to optimize the pairing of alumni and students, which was previously done solely by hand - Organized the logistics of carrying out Society 53’s signature SCuppers event, which connect alumni to over 100 current graduate and undergraduate students in a casual dining setting - Student Ambassador Host for incoming freshman students ### DivestSC Committee @ DivestSC Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Performing outreach to alumni and student organizations to garner support for USC to divest from its $277 million fossil fuel investments and reinvest in renewables - Conducting literature searches to debunk myths about fossil fuel divestment ### Menon Fellow @ Menon Labs Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 - Wrote and modified code to extract statistics from personal Facebook data using natural language processing methods. ### GHG Reduction Team @ Cupertino Youth Climate Action Team Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 - Championing for stricter environmental conservation laws on a community, city, and state level - Currently lobbying the Cupertino City Council to pass stricter GHG emission reduction goals in line with other Silicon Valley cities ### CURE Undergraduate Researcher @ USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 - Characterized the novel LSUCC0713 bacterium by using flow cytometry to measure cell densities through a series of minimal media, temperature, and salinity experiments. ## Education ### M.S. Computer Science in B.S. Quantitative Biology, Applied Analytics Minor, Computer Science Minor University of Southern California ### De Anza College ### San Jose City College ### Cupertino High School ### Master's degree in Computer Science University of Southern California ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/leon-zha --- Source: https://flows.cv/leonzha JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/leonzha/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-11