Hello, I'm Syed M. Affan.

I'm a full-stack AI developer at KUEC. These days, I'm also building Notch, and running Socia, on a mission to curate the most active builder community in the UAE.

Away from work, I play table tennis, vlog my experiences, and occasionally direct short films. I also love hackathons and now host them under Socia.

Projects

  • NotchApril 2026 to present

    A cross-platform AI teleprompter with offline voice-following and privacy-first local processing, scaled to 1,500+ trial downloads and 100+ paying users.

  • CDPCF2026

    A cultural data provenance and compliance framework protecting intangible heritage from unauthorized use in AI training.

  • Modulus2025

    A five-stage agentic data-science workflow that moves from exploratory analysis to model evaluation in under a minute.

  • UAVMS2025

    Drone identity verification combining computer vision with indoor positioning, 90.5% mAP, and a 50,000+ image dataset.

  • F.A.L.C.O.N.2025

    A YOLOv9 flood-mapping pipeline for satellite imagery and faster disaster-response planning.

  • GreenCart2024

    An AI-assisted sustainability scanner that turns product impact into practical shopping decisions.

Work

  • Full-Stack AI Developer, KUECJul 2025 to present

    Leading a six-person team building an AI-powered research commercialization platform now in pilot-stage UAT with Khalifa University and ATRC.

  • Co-Founder & COO, SociaMay 2025 to present

    Co-founded and scaled a UAE-based hackathon community and builder network to 1,000+ builders across 70+ colleges, leading partnerships, programs, and events.

  • Artificial Intelligence Lab Intern, Ab OvoMay to Jul 2025

    Built retrieval, semantic chunking, and embedding pipelines that turn railway legal documents into real-time B2B insight.

  • Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Fellow, Khalifa UniversityOct 2024 to Feb 2025

    Applied and benchmarked hybrid transformer models for low-latency binary and multi-class intrusion detection.

  • Software Engineering Intern, Siemens Industrial LLCJun to Aug 2024

    Built a Python and JavaScript KPI automation tool that reduced customer-service data-processing time by 80%.

Education

  • Khalifa University2021 to 2025

    BSc in Computer Engineering. Graduated with Excellence with Honors.

Publications

Recognition

  • UN Global SDG Public Policy Innovation Challenge2026

    2nd place. Represented the UAE in China as the Middle East’s only finalist, selected from 866 teams and 4,000+ applicants across 100+ countries.

  • Congress of Arabic & Creative Industries2025

    1st place. University category for Baian, selected from 40+ projects.

  • NYUAD Slush'D AI Hackathon2025

    1st place. Among 104 teams for Socia.

  • Zayed University Digital Transformation Hackathon2025

    1st place. Among 14 teams for F.A.L.C.O.N.

  • BCG Platinion Middle East Hackathon2024

    1st place. Regional award for Scrap-E, an AI-assisted e-waste recycling concept.

  • Smart Mobile Application Contest2024

    1st place. Among 13 teams for GreenCart, an AI-powered sustainability scanner for more informed shopping.

  • 2nd KU Sustainability E-Gaming Competition2024

    3rd place. Built Eco Warrior Defense, a Scratch game designed to make environmental awareness more engaging.

  • Emirates Post Group Logistics Unleashed Competition2023

    2nd place. Prototyped a gravity-fed mail sorting system with machine learning for automated mail processing.

  • 1st KU Sustainability E-Gaming Competition2023

    3rd place. Built Recycle Rush, a Unity and C# mobile game that teaches younger audiences about recycling and sustainability.