Alec Levy

About Me

Computer Engineering @ UC Santa Cruz | Wireless Sensor Networks at the jLab in Smart Sensing

I'm a Computer Engineering student at UC Santa Cruz and an undergraduate researcher, starting a PhD in Fall of 2027 (if you are a professor, let me know if you are accepting PhD students!). I am passionate about building embedded systems, low power electronics, and building infrastructure constrained devices. On top of that, I believe in developing platforms that can remain sustainable both in their design and in their applications. Some problems I am interested in are wireless communication constraints in WSN's, power efficiency in low power systems, and smart sensing systems.

Some hobbies of mine are: Climbing, game design, reading sci-fi, and cycling.

Skills:

C/C++, Python, C, Java, MATLAB, JavaScript
Embedded & Hardware: ESP32, STM32, Raspberry Pi, I2C/SPI/BLE, ESP-IDF
Web & Cloud: React, Flask, SQLAlchemy, REST APIs, PostgreSQL
DevOps: Docker, AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, CloudFront), Git
Tools: GDB/OpenOCD, Mediapipe, Pydub
Adaptive data logging & low-power firmware design

Highlighted Features

DirtViz: Visualizing 50M+ Sensor Data Points

DirtViz is an open-source data visualization platform for the ENTS environmental sensing ecosystem. Built with JavaScript, React, and SQL and scaled on AWS, it supports analysis of 50M+ sensor data points for 5+ research labs.

View Live GitHub

ENTS Accepted at ACM SenSys '26

I co-authored ENTS: Experiences in Co-Designed Environmental Sensing, accepted at ACM SenSys '26. It features ALIA, my event-driven adaptive reporting algorithm that cuts power-hungry edge-node transmissions by up to 98%.

Projects

I take on interdisciplinary projects across embedded systems, wireless sensing, and full-stack web development with a focus on sustainable, low-power technology that solves real-world problems.

ESP32-C3 Embedded Systems
I2C sensors, BLE HID, weather station
C · ESP-IDF · NimBLE

Experiences

jLab in Smart Sensing

Wireless Sensor Network Developer, December 2023 - Present
Santa Cruz, CA

I develop the embedded wireless sensor network platform (ENTS) used by 40+ researchers, and I lead development of DirtViz, an open-source data visualization platform built with JavaScript, React, and SQL that supports analysis of 50M+ sensor data points for 5+ research labs (Stanford, Georgia Tech, Northwestern, UCSD, UCSC).

I optimized scalability by managing AWS infrastructure (EC2, S3, RDS, CloudFront), enabling 18x data growth, and improved contributor engagement using Docker environments so that 15 open-source contributors could set up development environments seamlessly. I also developed an adaptive data logging algorithm (ALIA) that reduces power-hungry transmissions by upwards of 98%.

University of California, Santa Cruz

Web Development Lecturer, August 2025 - December 2025
Santa Cruz, CA

I taught 5 undergraduate students core full-stack web development skills, including Flask, React, and RESTful API design. I oversaw student contributions to end-to-end web applications, guiding architecture, code quality, and version control practices.

Awards & Publications

Co-Author in ACM SenSys '26 2026

ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
Co-authored ENTS: Experiences in Co-Designed Environmental Sensing (Madden, J., et al.), a full paper on the co-designed ENTS environmental sensing platform.
Runner-Up, ACM Student Research Competition 2025

SIGBED @ ESWEEK 2025
Awarded Runner-Up in the ACM Student Research Competition (SIGBED) at Embedded Systems Week.
First Author in ACM SenSys '25 (Demo) 2025

ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems
First-author demo, Hardware to Unleash Novel Energy Sources for Outdoor Sensor Networks (Levy, A., et al.).
Invited Demonstration to U.S. Congresswoman 2025

U.S. House of Representatives
Presented an invited hardware demonstration to U.S. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.

CV

My full CV with education, experience, projects, publications, and honors.

Download Full CV

Contact Me

Feel free to reach out to me at aleclevy3@gmail.com.
I can also be found on LinkedIn and GitHub.

Send an Email