Sam Poder
👋 G'day! My name is Sam. I'm an Australian who grew up in Singapore; nowadays, I live in California. I'm learning all about computers and languages at Berkeley. Go bears!
I enjoy making things (mostly involving code), playing soccer, running hackathons and adventuring on public transit.
Here are a couple of projects I'm proud of:
🏦 Open source, transparency-orientated fiscal sponsorship platform for hackers & creatives.
🌏 A 4D multimedia experience showcasing the upcoming challenges caused by global warming.
🌁 The behind-the-scenes of the first high school hackathon since the pandemic!
I graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Computer Science and Linguistics in Spring 2026. I’ve returned for my fourth year to study for an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (graduating in Spring 2027).
I'm a Head TA for CS70 (Berkeley's discrete mathematics and probability theory class). I also help organise Cal Hacks. In the past, I've done PL + HCI research in the PLAIT Lab and language revitalization work in the Linguistics department.
I interned at ▲ Vercel on the Turbopack team in San Francisco last summer. I wrote a blog post about everything I worked on! The summer prior, I worked at Ambrook on financial tools that enable farms to become more sustainable.
After graduating, I’ll be returning to ▲ Vercel as a Member of Technical Staff on the Turbopack team.
I love exploring the Bay Area, here are some favourite pictures of mine:
If you're ever in the area (say hi!), I'd recommend checking out Grotto Rock Park, Albany Bulb, Twin Peaks, the Clark Kerr Fire Trails, and Dolores Park.
More things of mine are on my GitHub, @sampoder. Feel free to email me about anything at sampoder [at] berkeley.edu.