# Theo Cucu

> Software Engineer at EliseAI

Location: New York, New York, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/theocucu

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ EliseAI
Jan 2025 – Present | New York, New York, United States

### Software Engineer @ Budy
Jan 2024 – Jan 2025 | Palo Alto, California, United States
• Integrated OpenAI and Google APIs into TypeScript backends to develop pipelines that convert meeting transcripts into actionable outputs, such as SOWs, flowcharts, and project plans.
• Implemented advanced prompt engineering to dynamically generate tools, activities, prompts and workflows from customer inputs, enabling an intuitive and automated user experience.
• Representing Budy at DreamForce 2024.

### Graduate Research Assistant @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Co-managing a pioneering project alongside a postdoctoral researcher, focused on predicting the emotional impact of visual stimuli.
Leading the design and execution of online behavioral studies aiming to systematically capture the nuanced emotional responses of subjects to varied visual stimuli.
Spearheading the collection and analysis of complex behavioral data, leveraging this information to understand emotional patterns and responses at a granular level.
Preparing to develop sophisticated machine learning models capable of predicting emotional responses to visual stimuli, based on empirical data gathered from initial studies.

### Research Assistant @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jan 2023 – Jan 2023
Spearheaded the refactoring of codebases for multiple online art projects, enhancing performance, scalability, and maintainability.
Managed and optimized codebases, ensuring robustness and efficiency across diverse digital art platforms.
Developed and implemented shared libraries with advanced audio and video functionalities, facilitating seamless integration across projects and boosting multimedia performance.
Led and mentored a team of software engineers / researchers, fostering a collaborative environment.
Conducted peer review meetings, promoting knowledge sharing, code quality improvement, and best practices in software development.
Authored and maintained comprehensive documentation for new and existing libraries and refactored codebases, streamlining project onboarding and knowledge transfer.

### Research Coordinator @ Carnegie Mellon University
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Coordinated behavioral and fMRI testing of 10+ epilepsy and stroke patients. Used BrainVoyager/MATLAB for fMRI data collection and analysis and PsychoPy/Python for experimental design and programming.

### Research Assistant @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jan 2018 – Jan 2022 | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Curated data from the lab’s fMRI database for a project on bilingual executive functions - led to publication.
Managed a natural language processing project on quantifying the genericness of English language research compared
to non-English language research. Used NLTK for data processing, model building and data analysis - led
to conference.
Conducted behavioral psycholinguistics research on sentence comprehension across different languages (Turkish, Hindi) and speakers (multilingual, accented). Used Python for experimental design and implementation and R for data analysis. Collaborated on a project on color labeling on Tsimane’ speakers.
Conducted an eye-tracking experiment and curated materials for reading comprehension experiments - led to publication.

### Research Intern @ Univ Paris Diderot
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Paris, Île-de-France, France
Ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) experiment, and ran and analyzed a behavioral pilot study on speeded grammaticality judgments on tense mismatch effects in French - led to conference.


## Education
### Master of Engineering - MEng in Cognitive Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

### Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Linguistics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/theo-cucu-b8a625227

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Source: https://flows.cv/theocucu
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/theocucu/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-05