Joseph Alemu

Who am I

I'm Joseph Alemu. I graduated from DePaul University in June 2026 with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and I'm now a master's student at the University of Chicago, studying computer science with a specialization in high-performance computing.

My interests lie in HPC, GPU programming, low-latency engineering, and compilers. I also enjoy video game development and 3D modeling, which I've been doing for about six years now.

Technical Journey

My journey started in my senior year of high school, where I took a course in digital electronics. That class had me building circuits on breadboards and soldering my own designs onto PCBs. One of my proudest achievements was a circuit that displayed a random number on an LCD display.

I carried that interest in hardware with me into my first year as a computer science student at DePaul. Most of my first-year classes didn't hold my attention. Then I took Systems, and I learned an enormous amount from it: assembly, ROP exploits, system interrupts, caching, and a range of other compiler and OS concepts.

That course turned out to be a pivotal moment, and the catalyst for pursuing research. Afterward I reached out to professors and landed a role as a systems research assistant at DePaul, where I learned a great deal about C++, the stages of a JIT compiler, and how large systems are built. Half a year in, I decided to explore other fields.

That's what led me to Motorola Solutions. In 2025 I was accepted into the Motorola Solutions Foundation Scholarship program at DePaul, where I ran into problems I had never seen before — such as how to push millions of gene expressions through a long data pipeline without it taking weeks.

Making progress on that work taught me the importance of maximizing the hardware you already have, and of heterogeneous computing. That's what led me to high-performance computing, where I am now.

Hobbies

I love 3D modeling. I started when I was 16, and bought myself a drawing tablet six years ago as a reward for finishing a commission. I don't sculpt as much as I used to, but I still open ZBrush whenever a character idea gets hold of me.

Contact me

Have an interesting project?
Got a job offer?
Have a question?
Want to talk?

alemu.s.joseph@gmail.com