Hi, I’m Aava (she/her) ☀️ — a Systems Design Engineering student at the University of Waterloo (BASc, April 2027), living somewhere between Toronto and Waterloo.
I do three things, roughly equally:
- 💻 Engineer — 5 industry terms across consumer IoT, medical devices, fintech/POS, and B2B marketplace
- 🔬 Researcher — 2 ACM CHI publications, including a 2026 Honorable Mention
- 🎪 Community builder — from weekly co-working sessions to a 2,500-person showcase
They keep turning out to be the same problem from different angles: who gets designed for, and who gets left out.
Email · LinkedIn · GitHub · Resume · More about me →
Work 💻
Faire — Software Engineering Intern · Jan – Aug 2026
🔀 Got three platforms to agree on what a component is — server-driven UI unified across iOS, Android, and web — then shipped a navigation redesign to ~200K retailers.
Zoomifi — Software Engineering Intern · Jan – Apr 2025
🛒 Built the self-serve tool that let 2,000+ Clover merchants configure their own checkout and donation flows, instead of filing a ticket and waiting.
Intellijoint Surgical — Software Engineering Intern · Sep – Dec 2023
🦴 Built a surgical navigation MVP that shipped as an actual product. Also my first time dragging SwiftUI into a legacy Objective-C codebase.
ecobee — Software Engineering Intern · Jan – Apr 2023
🐣 My first iOS role, on a smart security app used by 776K+ homeowners. Learned an enormous amount in four months.
Research 🔬
Student researcher at the Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab (TAGLab) — making technology genuinely useful for older adults, not just accessible in the checkbox sense.
⭐ Time Travel Tours — accessible social VR storytelling for older adults
🎙️ Older adults build VR worlds out of their own memories by talking to it. No technician in the room. First-author paper at CHI 2025 · demo video
🏅 From Barriers to Blueprints — critical systematic review of older adults and social VR
🤔 When older adults push back on social VR, that’s design intelligence about what the tech is asking of them — not a deficit to train away. Honorable Mention at CHI 2026.
In progress
🧪 Interviewing AI agents about aging, then running reflexive thematic analysis on the transcripts to surface the deficit paradigms baked into them. Treating LLMs as cultural artifacts, not participant proxies.
Community 🎪
Central to my work, not a side quest. I gravitate to the unglamorous behind-the-scenes stuff that makes things actually run — and where communities don’t exist, I tend to found them.
Socratica — Session Host & Lead
🌱 Led it in my second year and shaped its early culture. It’s since grown to 3,000+ members across 30+ cities — it stopped needing me, which is the point.
Socratica Symposium 2025 — Logistics Lead
🎟️ Ran logistics for the world’s largest student showcase: ~$250K budget, 100+ volunteers, 2,500+ attendees. Mostly spreadsheets and contingency plans nobody ever sees.
Hack the North — Volunteer Lead · Aug 2023 – Aug 2024
🏃♀️ Directed 400+ volunteers at Canada’s largest hackathon.
Women Who Build — Organizer
👩💻 Started a Toronto networking meetup for women in tech, benefiting local nonprofits.
ACED — where this all started 🌱
🏛️ When DECA was banned in 2022, students lost live judging — the part that actually made it worth doing. So we built our own so nobody had to go without it. First time I founded a thing instead of joining one.
Projects 🛠️
- 🗺️ Navcare — route optimization for Personal Support Workers, so less of their day disappears into commuting. Top 12 Finalist at Hack the North.
- 🧶 Knit — helps older adults actually meet each other, over video. 3rd-place sponsor prize at Hack the North.
- 🏥 WaitingRoom — real-time ER wait times, so you know what you’re actually waiting for.
More of the older and stranger ones over on my personal corner →
Skills & Education 🎓
- Languages — TypeScript, Swift, Java, Python, C++, C#
- Frameworks — React, React Native, SwiftUI, Next.js, Flask, Django, Unity
- Tools & Cloud — AWS (Amplify, Lambda, DynamoDB, S3), Git, Xcode, Cursor, Claude Code, Mode
- Domains — full-stack web, iOS, server-driven UI, VR/Unity, AI-assisted development, HCI research methods, accessibility (WCAG 2.1, ARIA), design systems
🏫 University of Waterloo — BASc, Systems Design Engineering (April 2027) 🏆 President’s Scholarship of Distinction · President’s International Experience Award · nominated for the Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Excellence Scholarship
Email · LinkedIn · GitHub · Resume · More about me →