Open to contract work and research collaboration now; full-time SWE roles starting Nov 2026.

Basel Ashraf

I build fast, from-scratch software engines: physics simulators, layout systems, and full-stack web platforms.

Creator of Eigendrum (Zenodo DOI, Wikipedia link, Website Design Awards winner), LayoutSans (17 kB layout engine outperforming Meta's Yoga), and Prolific Tea (100,000+ page views).

Work

Five selected projects across numerical physics, computational geometry, layout internals, and web platforms.

A laptop screen leaning back on its hinge, blurred and dimmed toward the top edge, the WinDuo fold effect mid-close.

WinDuo

The iPhone Duo fold effect on Windows, with no hinge sensor

Mac Duo ported Apple's iPhone Duo fold effect to MacBooks by reading their lid angle sensor. Windows laptops don't have one, so WinDuo measures the lid's rotation from the webcam instead, using phase correlation on the vertical image shift a closing lid produces. Free for personal use, verified by 118 tests.

Python PyQt6 OpenCV GLSL
The Roadwright interface: a drawn car on two rounded-square wheels rolling along the road solved for them, its axle line dead level.

Roadwright

Solves the road an arbitrary drawn wheel rolls on

A square wheel rolls smoothly on the right road. Roadwright generalises that to any wheel you draw, solving the road profile that holds the axle at constant height. Because both directions reduce to quadratures rather than an iterative solve, the road recomputes continuously while the axle is dragged. A square returns inverted catenaries to better than 1 part in 106, checked by 79 tests in CI.

TypeScript Canvas 2D Computational Geometry Web Audio API
The Eigendrum interface solving 2D Dirichlet Laplacian modes on drawn geometry.

Eigendrum

In-browser finite-element acoustics solver and modal synthesizer

Solves the 2D Dirichlet Laplacian eigenvalue problem on hand-drawn shapes using P1 finite elements in a background Web Worker in about 800 ms. Synthesizes physical acoustic overtones without pre-recorded audio. Verified Kac's isospectral drum theorem to within 1.07×10−7%.

159★ GitHub DOI Zenodo Award Website Design Awards 0.16% Analytic Error
JavaScript Web Audio API Finite Elements Web Workers Zero Deps
LayoutSans instrument panel demonstrating 100k items layout with zero measureText calls.

LayoutSans

17 kB headless layout engine outrunning Meta's Yoga by 2 to 3 times

High-performance 2D flex and grid layout engine for Node, Bun, Deno, Cloudflare Workers, and Canvas. Ships zero DOM and zero WASM in about 17 kB gzipped (18 times smaller than Yoga), with canvas text selection, clipboard copy, and screen-reader accessibility.

3x faster than Yoga 17 kB vs 300+ kB 67★ npm
TypeScript Layout Engine Canvas A11y npm Zero WASM
Prolific Tea researcher review platform interface with search and ratings.

Prolific Tea

Community researcher review and pay transparency platform

Review platform where academic participants rate researchers on fairness and rejection rates. Includes a companion Chrome extension intercepting study network requests, PWA push notifications, threaded reviews, and custom moderation tooling.

100,000+ Views 1,582 Researchers 0 Ads Community
Next.js PostgreSQL Chrome Extension PWA Tailwind CSS
Photophane diagram showing 3D caustic relief plate projecting photo onto wall.

Photophane

Inverse ray-tracing engine computing optical caustic plates

Computes 3D-printable continuous acrylic relief plates (10.97 mm depth) that project focused photographs onto distant walls through torchlight refraction. The physical optics algorithm is the forward model running the live Caustic simulation on this website.

10.97 mm Cut Depth 72 Upvotes STL 3D Engine
TypeScript Optics Physics WebGL 3D Printing Caustics

Systems & Tools

Open source contributions, protocol servers, conformance suites, and security disclosures.

Open Source & Developer Tools

4 systems
OSS Upgrade

Nextron PR #531

Upgraded Electron + Next.js framework to Next 16 and React 19 with Turbopack compatibility across 33 files. Merged and released the same day.

Next 16 · React 19 33 Files (+1,218 / -416)
MCP Server

holystitch

Model Context Protocol server compiling Google Stitch designs directly into React and Next.js component trees via native API calls without consuming LLM inference tokens.

MCP SDK Token Free 23★ GitHub
Rust Engine

fastemporal

Pure Rust reimplementation of Luxon and TC39 Temporal datetime APIs with zero heap allocations in hot paths. Passes 332 ported tests and benchmarks 7 to 216 times faster than JS Luxon.

332 Tests Passed 7-216x vs Luxon
Extension Shim

fx-inject-shim

Drop-in JavaScript shim restoring Firefox 152 tab and scripting injection APIs with zero call-site modifications for existing extensions.

Firefox 152 API 0 Call Site Changes

Security & Neural Research

2 findings
Security Bounty

Stored XSS in M-Pesa

Discovered and reported a stored cross-site scripting vulnerability in M-Pesa's PDF receipt generator through font descriptor injection. Validated and accepted on HackerOne.

Accepted Bounty HackerOne Validated
Neural Topologies

vibellm

Instant browser language model topology generator: randomizes both layer structures and weights to inspect untreated neural architecture behaviors.

57 r/LocalLLM 12★ GitHub

Data Pipelines & Retrieval Systems

2 systems
Hybrid Retrieval

Legal Document RAG

Hybrid vector and keyword search over 25,303 legal documents. Handles 230+ concurrent users on a single T4 GPU via a custom async request queue with zero out-of-memory errors.

230+ Users / T4 GPU 25,303 Docs
Data Pipeline

Automated CRM ETL

Unattended Python ETL pipeline restructuring 120,000+ records across 1,200+ inconsistent spreadsheets into a normalized CRM schema with OpenAI API schema mapping, reducing API costs by 13%.

120K+ Records -13% API Cost

Background

Dual-degree computer engineering background combined with international research exchanges.

  1. BSc Computer Engineering & Software Systems

    University of East London & Ain Shams University (Dual Degree)

    February 2021 to Expected November 2026

  2. Graduate Summer School: Università di Pisa

    Human-Centric ICT for Industry 5.0, Pisa, Italy

    September 2025: Merit Scholarship (29/30)

  3. Exchange Program: Hanyang University

    Seoul, South Korea: Computer Science Department

    September 2024 to January 2025: GPA 4.0 / 4.5

Technical Competencies

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, Rust, Python, Java, SQL, C/C++

Systems & PDE Solvers

Finite Element Method (FEM), Web Workers, Canvas 2D/WebGL, Model Context Protocol (MCP), FAISS

Web & Infrastructure

Next.js, React, Node.js, Web Audio API, Chrome Extensions, PostgreSQL, Supabase, Docker, Linux, Git

Security & Analysis

Burp Suite, OWASP, Web Security Auditing, Font & Parser Exploitation, HackerOne Bug Bounty