Hello

I'm Dan Kawalsky

and this is my portfolio website!

Stay a while. I've selected a few different projects to show-case here, and I'm always tinkering behind the scenes. Look around, and please reach out if anything catches your eye.

Medium GitHub Mail

About me

I'm a Full Stack and Cloud Engineer passionate about building thoughtful, scalable systems that drive real-world impact. My career has spanned everything from emerging technology labs to large-scale cloud infrastructure, giving me a deep appreciation for both cutting-edge experimentation and production-grade reliability.

Today, I work at IBM Cloud, designing distributed systems that support thousands of customers worldwide. My work focuses on backend performance, cost optimization, and cloud-agnostic architecture — often leveraging AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM Cloud to deliver tailored solutions for businesses.

Outside of work, I’m drawn to projects that intersect technology with storytelling, sustainability, and social good — whether that’s building ML-powered dashboards, interactive AR experiences, or digital tools for small businesses and nonprofits.

At my core, I’m a curious builder who loves solving complex problems, collaborating across disciplines, and continuously learning. When I’m not coding, you’ll probably find me exploring California’s coast, playing tennis, or planning my next trip somewhere new.

Work Experience

IBM Cloud

LA Times

SpaceX

USC ICT MxR Lab

USC Computer Science

Projects

🤖 Personal

Irembo Chatbot

A little weekend project: a RAG chatbot that helps people in Rwanda navigate Irembo — the online portal for government services. Built it after seeing friends struggle to find clear info. It’s powered by LangChain, OpenAI, and a simple UI for WhatsApp or web chat.

PersonalChatbotLangChainOpenAIRwanda

Screenshot of Irembo Chatbot answering a question about Rwanda's government services

🏃 Personal

Giving the Distance

A platform that turns your workouts into charity donations. You connect Strava, pick a cause, and ask friends or family to pledge a few cents per mile. It’s such a simple but clever idea — making movement meaningful without the heavy lift of traditional fundraising.

PersonalFitnessCharityAPI

Giving the Distance project homepage screenshot

⛵ Personal

Africa Green Tours

I met Claude in Kibuye, Rwanda, when he took me on a tour of Lake Kivu. He asked me to make him a website, so I made this, his Google Business listing, and his TripAdvisor listing. Each one is getting more popular every month!

PersonalTravelHTML

Hero page for Africa Green Tours tourism website

🌳 Personal

Carbon Footprint Dashboard

Your carbon footprint is calculable from your location history. How? Well, check out this repository and website and find out! Then, consider donating to an accredited carbon offset organization.

JavascriptHTMLOpen SourceData Visualization

✅ IBM Cloud

Private DNS GLB Health Checking

The health check feature of IBM Cloud private DNS global load balancing is essential to ensuring the availability of your application infrastructure. The health check is a DNS solution, and it is highly configurable for whatever setup your private network demands. I made health checking (the microservices themselves) functional, available, and reliable.

IBM CloudPrivate DNSEnterpriseFull StackKubernetesMicroservices Architecture

☁️ Personal

Kubernetes Questions

KubernetesQuestions.com aims to be a resource for beginners, including a Q&A feature and credits for course providers. KubernetesQuestions.com is rendered on the "server side" (in this case serverless lambdas) and served from AWS where it was built and deployed using the budding AWS CDK.

Full StackServerless ArchitectureServer-Side RenderingTypeScriptReactKoaAWS

📈 Personal

WatchCovid.org

Constantly updated dashboard aesthetically providing metrics of global COVID-19 case data across 3 categories.

ReactD3FirebaseMaterialUI

🚁 Personal

My 3D Space

An interactive, 3D space where a collection of my pursuits and interests live.

ThreeJSReactFirebase

📰 LA Times

Augmented Reality Web Article

The LA Times' (and perhaps world's) first AR news article. I built this with vanilla Javascript. The browser-based augmented reality leverages AR Core and ARKit and the interactive map is from Mapbox. The whole thing is cute. Check it out.

Mixed RealityJavascriptFlaskMapbox

GeoImpact

🦄 City Planning Engine

GeoImpact was a student startup that I built a prototype interactive city planning engine for. We pitched with this MVP and went to Phase II of the UChicago Polsky ANVC pitch competition.

QGISUnity

🧑🏻‍⚕️ Freelance

Mountain Counseling Billable Hours Dashboard

Mountain Counseling offers personal and professional life counseling. This unironically light green-themed dashboard graphically portrays billable employee activities over time. It also has basic administrative functions for managers, such as the ability to create and modify employee contact and login info.

ReactChartJSAWSFreelanceHIPAA Compliant

Project Mountain Counseling Billable Hours Dashboard

🕹️ USC Games

Olympus

Olympus is a virtual reality simulation game that takes place during the arrival of the first colonists on Mars. You scale and protect your colony until you can buy and build a self-sustaining water pump, without which Olympus will die of dehydration.

SteamVRHTC ViveUnity (C#)

🔬 USC Instite of Creative Technology

Picture-in-Picture Navigation

I developed an application (now in beta testing) that reduces optical flow to travel through virtual environments without the nauseating peripheral vection. My testing environments include procedurally generated forests, mazes, and outer space obstacle courses.

SteamVRHTC ViveUnity (C#)