Erol Kalayoglu

Entrepreneur · Engineer · Filmmaker

USC Viterbi ’30 · Los Angeles, CA
erolmunci@gmail.com · 240-815-9148
grademelon.org · linktr.ee/erolke
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Education

University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering · Los Angeles, CA · Class of 2030.

Montgomery Blair High School, Communication Arts Magnet · 2022–2026 · 4.94 W / 3.98 UW GPA · SAT 1550.

Built

GradeMelon · grademelon.org — Co-Founder & Lead Developer
  • Reverse-engineered Montgomery County’s legacy Synergy/StudentVue gradebook (SOAP/XML) and shipped a modern client on top of it; beta-tested in one high school, then released county-wide to ~4,000 daily users.
  • Stored zero student data server-side behind AES-encrypted cookies; Next.js 14/TypeScript on Cloudflare Workers, NDJSON streaming, “What-If” GPA calculator. Published research on its impact in the International Journal of High School Research (IJHSR).
mementoMorri — Flutter/Dart Android App
  • Released an app with 2,000 downloads that renders your life as a dot grid and re-applies it as a live wallpaper via a background worker and native Android MethodChannels.
Prediction-Market Trading BotMay 2026–present
  • Built an automated trader that realized $14,000 on Chainlink-resolved BTC 5-minute markets; cut order latency 961ms to 47ms by moving execution to AWS Ireland, while a backtest harness killed most candidate strategies before they traded.

Canvas LMS Vulnerability Disclosure — responsibly disclosed an XSS caused by outdated jQuery 1.7.2 (CVE-2015-9251); built a Node/Express PoC and video demo. Instructure shipped the fix and issued credit.

Converse — 2nd of 80 teams at MoCo Hacks: iterated from a Kotlin/Whisper Android prototype to a Gemini Live desktop assistant with persistent context and live camera and screen input.

Founded & Led

ERA Tech Support — Founder: started a free tech-support service and served 140+ seniors aged 65+, installing Wi-Fi, repairing devices, and guiding purchases.

Geoguessr Club — Co-Founder & President: grew a new club to 40+ members and ran competitive tournaments drawing 35+ participants.

Business Professionals of America — Co-President: revived the school chapter to 25+ active members and ran a “Finance Fundamentals” student budgeting workshop.

Film & Broadcast

Nepal Documentary — Director & Producer · Friends of Ek Ek Paila Foundation2026
  • Spent ten days in Nepal directing a documentary for a 501(c)(3) running volunteer medical camps in isolated Himalayan communities; it anchors a campaign that raised over $5,000 in its first week.
Independent Filmmaker — Director & Co-Producer · two shorts, two documentaries · featured on NBC 4
  • Grand Prize & Fan Favorite, Montgomery County Overdose Awareness, 1st of 1,800+ entries (2025); Grand Prize, DOT Pedestrian Safety (2024); Official Selection, NYC All-American HS Film Festival (2025).
  • Over $6,000 in prize money, reinvested in camera and audio gear; received the Congressman Jamie Raskin Local Hero Award (2024) for viral pedestrian-safety PSAs.

Blair Network Communications — Production Team Exec & Technical Director: led a 40-person team producing 28 segments for the daily multi-camera morning show.

Experience

JumpLights Inc. — Engineering Intern · Germantown, MDSpring 2023, Fall 2023, Summer 2024
  • Unprompted, 3D-printed a tape dispenser to break an assembly bottleneck on a line running hundreds of units a day; the manager estimated ~20% faster production, and the team that doubted it adopted it.
Growing Hope Globally — Lead Developer, only high-school intern · Carol Stream, ILSummer 2023
  • 2nd of 150+ entries, Congressional App Contest (MD-08): sole developer of a mobile app connecting donors to individual farmers across 13 countries; reported to the CEO.

Skills

Software: TypeScript, Python, Java, Kotlin, Dart, SQL · React, Next.js, React Native, Flutter, Flask

AI & hardware: RAG systems, Whisper, Gemini Live · 3D printing, Onshape CAD, DIALux

Creative: DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Figma · screenplay writing