An augmented meal cart for in-hospital use that helps prevent malnutrition in hospital patients by monitoring their food intake. SmartCart v3 captures before and after images/weights of hospital meals, segments and classifies foods, estimates portions using depth and scale data, and computes calories, macronutrients and micronutrients using a recipe database. Note that the repo is private as the project is still ongoing.
Hi! My name is
David Afonso Shepherd
Full-Stack Software Engineer · Machine Learning Engineer
1. About Me
Welcome to my website! My name is David Afonso Shepherd and I'm a final-year MEng Computer Science student at the University of Southampton.
I've previously interned with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Spotify, and served as President of the Artificial Intelligence society at the University of Southampton. I was also part of FLARE-X - a joint venture between the University of Southampton, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Edinburgh - competing in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire Competition.
Currently, I'm working with a team of engineers to develop SmartCart v3 - an augmented meal cart designed to help prevent malnutrition in hospital patients by monitoring their food intake - for the University Hospital Southampton NHS FT.
2. Experience
2.1 Internships
- •Part of the Learning Mountain Bet, a cross-functional team working on developing a new vertical (courses) for Spotify;
- •The LMB consists entirely of senior, staff & principal level and is one of Spotify's most fast-paced & dynamic teams;
- •Worked on a brand new feature aimed at enhancing the learning experience on Spotify;
- •Collaborated across several domains (web, backend and AI).
CI/CDGitDockerNext.jsREST APIsPrompt EngineeringLLM Evals
- •Worked with a team of 3 interns to promote and increase community involvement in fundraising for Dorset's Disability Charity 'Diverse Abilities';
- •Developed 'Hero's Leaderboard', a web app that promotes community engagement in fundraising through scoreboards & rewards.
Agile MethodologiesGitHTMLCSSPythonFlask
2.2 University Initiatives
- •I work with a team of 4 engineers to develop and test SmartCart v3, an augmented meal cart for in-hospital use;
- •SmartCart v3 aims to help prevent malnutrition in hospital patients by monitoring their food intake.
- •Part of FLARE-X, 1 of the 15 autonomous semi-finalist teams, in the $11M international XPRIZE Wildfire competition;
- •FLARE-X is a joint venture between the University of Southampton, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Edinburgh;
- •Using Reinforcement Learning, I trained a fixed-wing drone to allocate balls of fire extinguisher for optimal suppression of wildfire.
2.3 Extracurricular Activities
- •Led a committee of 8 and coordinated the society's 4 divisions (Education, Projects, Partnerships & Marketing);
- •Organised over 20 ML workshops, talks led by industry experts & other events for the society's 500+ members;
- •Led fundraising from academic & corporate sponsors, such as IET, Siemens & Cirium;
- •Supervised over 10 student-led ML projects and organised 2 UK-wide AI Hackathons.

- •Led the society's Education Division. This division is responsible for organising the society's bi-weekly ML workshops;
- •Developed a beginner-friendly ML curriculum, by simplifying complex models into interactive & hands-on workshops;
- •Covered Neural Networks, Convolutional Neural Networks, Recurrent Neural Networks, Reinforcement Learning, Natural Language Processing, Generative Adversarial Networks, Diffusion Models and Tree-Based Models.

- •Managed the society's communications, ensuring effective coordination between the committee, external partners and sponsors;
- •Supported the organisation of the society's workshops, talks and other events, assisting with the logistics & event planning;
- •Oversaw meeting agendas, minutes & documentation across the society's 4 divisions.

2.4 Volunteering
- •Gathered views and concerns from over 250 Computer Science students and presented these issues effectively to the department;
- •Collected and analysed data on the 2024-25 modules in order to make improvements to the degree.
- •Participated in a mentoring program, providing one-on-one support to a Year 10 student;
- •Assisted with academic tasks, including homework & exam study, while improving their attendance and encouraging an open mindset;
- •Supported the development of essential skills, such as motivation & confidence, contributing to their well-being and mental health.
3. Projects
3.1 Recent Projects
A collection of RL policies developed for autonomous wildfire suppression using a fixed-wing drone. The agent learns to navigate a dynamic wildfire environment and optimally deploy fire extinguisher balls. This project explored the impact of different fire spread rates, observation spaces, reward functions and algorithms on agent performance. Note that the repo is private as the competition is still ongoing.
3.2 Unity / C#
A decision-driven third-person adventure game where a player embarks on a medieval-themed quest, shaping their fate through choices and consequences.
A third-person zombie shooter where a player battles waves of relentless zombies. Features multiple rooms, each introducing new challenges and enemy spawns.
A fast-paced racing game where a player strives to beat their own lap record. Features both a single-player mode and a mode with AI-controlled opponents.
3.3 Java
An analytics dashboard designed to evaluate and visualise the performance of advertising campaigns.
A creative twist on Tetris featuring zero gravity and a multiplayer mode for a fresh strategic experience.
A simulator that recreates the sound of an orchestra performing a given composition, blending musical modelling and procedural audio generation.
3.4 Python / Machine Learning
A fine-tuned ResNet50 model trained to classify axial-view MRI scans of brain tumors. The model achieved an accuracy of 99% on the 4-class tumor classification task. This project explored the impact of data augmentation and transfer learning on model performance.
A collection of deep learning models trained to classify music genres using Mel Spectrograms. The best-performing model (a CNN with batch normalization) achieved an accuracy of 73% on the 10-class genre classification task. This project explored the impact of regularization techniques on model performance.
A K-Means clustering model applied to the text8 dataset to group words based on their semantic relationships using a co-occurrence matrix. This project explored unsupervised learning, word representations and semantic structure discovery in text data.
An XGBoost model trained to predict whether a patient has heart disease based on lifestyle and health indicators. Built as part of a hands-on workshop I delivered on building your first tree-based model, introducing participants to decision trees, ensemble learning and class imbalance.
A recurrent neural network trained to predict Tesla's stock price based on its value over the past 12 days. Built as part of a hands-on workshop I delivered on building your first RNN, introducing participants to sequence modelling, temporal dependencies and time series forecasting.
A convolutional neural network trained to classify images of characters from 'The Simpsons'. Built as part of a hands-on workshop I delivered on building your first CNN, introducing participants to image classification, feature extraction and convolutional layers.
A neural network trained to predict passenger survival on the Titanic using features such as passenger class, sex and family aboard. Built as part of a hands-on workshop I delivered on building your first neural network, demonstrating the fundamentals of data preprocessing, model training and model evaluation.
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