carlos
mbendera
i like building
cool things.
Former Apple intern, two summers. Won Apple's WWDC23 Swift Student Challenge with a rhythm game that used hand tracking. I host radio shows, write about audio and Swift, and I'm currently building Setto — a personal DJ for Apple Music.
Setto: Your Personal DJ
A swipe based personal DJ for Apple Music. Featured by Apple in the US and Canada.
Voyager: Agentic Business Travel
An agentic copilot for the business travel lifecycle. Plan, book, get approved, fly, recover from delays, expense it. The agent runs Qwen 2.5 7B locally via Ollama with 30+ tool calls wired up to Duffel, Mapbox, Foursquare, Tavily, MyTSA, and corporate policy checks. It renders the same UI components as the dashboard so the agent feels native, not bolted on.
Rhythm Snap
A rhythm game that uses the iPad's camera for hand gesture recognition. Built it because I kept snapping my fingers to music. Won Apple's WWDC23 Swift Student Challenge. 1 of 350 winners worldwide.
Y Combinator Startup School
Two days of talks, workshops, and meetups with founders and YC partners.
Community for Swift Students Korea - International Speaker
Seoul, South Korea
IMC Prosperity Trading Challenge
Global (Online)
Top 1.6% (221/13,614)
Work
Apple Inc.
Vision Products Group – Real Time Software Engineering Intern
Apple Inc.
Vision Products Group – Technology Investigation Intern
University of Kansas
Undergraduate Research Assistant: Mobile App & AI Developer
Specify Collections Consortium
Quality Assurance & Software Developer
Education
University of Kansas
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science - GPA: 3.87/4.00
Korea University
Generative AI and Large Language Models + Introduction To Machine Learning
University of Leeds
Exchange Semester in the United Kingdom
South China University of Technology
International Foundation Year, Computer Science - GPA: 3.79/4.00
I like building things that make noise. When I'm not coding, I'm probably at a radio station or discovering music I'll never shut up about.
I've hosted shows on KJHK 90.7 FM, Leeds Student Radio, and BFF.fm in San Francisco. Audio is the thread that connects everything I work on — from Spatial Audio on Vision Pro to the apps I ship now.
I just graduated from the University of Kansas. Right now I'm shipping Setto, a swipe based personal DJ for Apple Music. Featured by Apple in the US and Canada.