Nickolas Chua

Renaissance Engineering Programme Scholar @ NTU

Nickolas Chua
01About

Year 1 Computer Science student at NTU's Renaissance Engineering Programme (B.Eng + M.Sc. in Technology Management, minor in Mathematics).

I like building systems where data meets decisions. Currently implementing a research paper on combinatorial arbitrage in prediction markets — using LLM-powered semantic comparison to detect mispricings across 8,000+ Polymarket contracts, with a full pipeline from TimescaleDB ingestion to Kelly-sized order execution.

Interested in quantitative systems, applied ML, and backend engineering. I enjoy taking things from research papers to production.

When I'm not debugging pipelines, I'm 20 meters underwater — I work part-time as an assistant dive instructor in Singapore.

02Skills
LanguagesPython · TypeScript · C#
ML & DataPyTorch · Pandas · Scikit-Learn
ToolsGit · LangChain · PostgreSQL · Next.js
CertificationsML with Python (FreeCodeCamp) · Data Analysis (FreeCodeCamp) · Foundational C# (Microsoft) · Computer Vision (Kaggle) · Feature Engineering (Kaggle)
03Projects
04Experience
Dec 2025 – Jan 2026

Software Engineering Intern

Tech Incubator at Queens College, New York

Shipped RentAShelf.co, a live full-stack marketplace connecting store owners with brands.

  • ·Shipped live marketplace handling real transactions within 6-week internship
  • ·Processed multi-party payments via custom Stripe Connect pipeline
May 2025 – Dec 2025

BRAIN Research Consultant

WorldQuant

Developed systematic trading alphas on the BRAIN platform across global equity markets.

05Hackathons
Feb 2026

NUS CMS Maritime Hackathon 2026 — 1st Runner-Up

Smart Fleet Selection

Built Smart Fleet Selection system using MILP optimization for bunker fuel transport from Singapore to Australia.

  • ·Developed robust min-max MILP resilient to carbon price and safety regulation changes
  • ·Optimized 22-vessel fleet achieving $20.8M/month cost with 10% lower emissions
Feb 2026

BeyondBinary Hackathon — Best First Year's Award

SenseAI

Built accessibility-first communication platform bridging deaf, blind, deafblind, and mute users through real-time AI.

  • ·Real-time ASL detection using MediaPipe + LSTM with 12 sign vocabulary
  • ·Integrated Hume AI for emotional tone analysis with braille output support
Feb 2026

Hack4Good 2026 — Finalist

MINDSConnect

Built solution for social good challenge, advancing to finals.

Jan 2026

NUS Hack&Roll 2026

Rabak

Built Rabak, a Singlish speech analysis tool that tracks your "lah", "lor", and "walao" with AI speaker recognition.

  • ·Implemented speaker diarization with pyannote for multi-person conversations
  • ·Built custom Singlish detection pipeline on top of MERaLiON ASR
Oct 2025

SingHacks 2025 — 2nd Runner-Up

TripMate

Engineered TripMate in 48 hours, automating travel quotes under 2 minutes via TesseractOCR and Groq.

  • ·Reduced travel quote time from 15+ minutes to under 2 minutes
  • ·Built voice-enabled RAG pipeline with OpenAI Whisper and ElevenLabs
Oct 2025

NTU CEIT x Baringa Trading Competition — Champion

LNG Trading Model

Developed an LNG trading optimization model combining forward curves, ARIMA-GARCH forecasting, and Monte Carlo simulation.

  • ·Won 1st place against 20+ teams with trading model
  • ·Combined ARIMA-GARCH forecasting with Monte Carlo risk simulation
Oct 2025

GovTech AI CTF 2025 — Top 15

Competed in AI-focused capture the flag competition using machine learning and adversarial techniques.

Aug 2025

TikTok TechJam 2025

BERTBERT

Developed BERTBERT, a multi-tower deep learning model processing 100K+ reviews with 20 metadata inputs.

  • ·Achieved classification accuracy surpassing GPT-4o on 100K+ reviews
  • ·Designed cross-attention architecture handling 40:1 class imbalance
Aug 2025

NTU x Base Hackathon — 2nd Runner-Up

WellnessBuddy

Developed fitness tracker using Virtuals Protocol Python SDK and Agent Commerce Protocol.

  • ·Won 2nd Runner-Up with on-chain fitness tracking dApp
  • ·Integrated Virtuals Protocol for hierarchical AI agent architecture
Jun 2025

WorldQuant IQC 2025 — Top 1%

Placed in the top 1% among 80,000 participants in global alpha research competition.

06Education
Aug 2025 – Present

Renaissance Engineering Programme Scholar

Nanyang Technological University

Bachelor of Engineering Science (Computer Science) with minor in Mathematics, Master of Science in Technology Management.

07Contact

Open to Summer 2026 internships in software engineering, ML, or quant roles. Let's connect.