Rutgers CS + Economics

Tony Pichardo

Tony Pichardo | First-gen Mexican-American student and aspiring SWE. Building clean code, playing my saxophone, and enjoying college life.

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About Me

Code, capital, and building what matters

First-generation Mexican-American · Rutgers CS + Economics · Bridgeton, NJ

Antonio reading at home

I am a first-generation Mexican-American student at Rutgers University pursuing a double major in Computer Science and Economics. Born and raised in Bridgeton, NJ, my background heavily shapes how I view the world. Growing up, I saw firsthand how economic realities impact everyday lives, which sparked a deep curiosity about how large-scale systems work—and how they can be engineered to work better.

My journey so far, which is mapped out in my resume, revolves around a pretty simple idea: tech and economics shouldn't live in separate silos. I look at Computer Science as the engine to build powerful tools, and Economics as the roadmap to figure out what is actually worth building. I don't write code just for the sake of passing an assignment; I use it to solve practical, real-world problems where data and human choices collide.

Bridging the Gap Between Code and Capital

Right now, I split my energy between software engineering, data analytics, and institutional leadership. As a Software Engineer Intern for the State of NJ Department of Treasury, I get to apply my technical toolkit to massive infrastructure. I manage and optimize databases holding over 100,000 rows of statewide asset data, and I've built automated Python pipelines that eliminate hours of manual work every week. Seeing my code directly improve government efficiency is incredibly rewarding.

At the same time, I apply this exact same data-driven mindset to my role as the Student Body Treasurer for the Rutgers University Student Assembly. Overseeing and allocating a $3.5M+ institutional budget across hundreds of student organizations isn't just an administrative job—it's an optimization problem. Instead of relying on outdated financial tracking, I built custom auditing and modeling tools using Python to bring real efficiency and transparency to how student funds are managed.

Antonio at a formal Rutgers event
Antonio with Rutgers student organization members

Building for Impact

Antonio and teammates at the IBM Datathon

I'm at my best when I'm thrown into fast-paced, high-stakes environments where I have to build solutions from scratch. A great example of this was competing in the IBM Datathon, where my team placed 3rd out of 53 teams. We built BillBuddy, an end-to-end data pipeline that extracts unstructured medical invoices via OCR and uses machine learning to spot pricing disparities and arbitrage opportunities.

Whether I am scripting automated deployments for hundreds of devices at the Rutgers IT office, scraping market trends to help a business capture regional market share, or designing backend architectures, my goal is always the same: take messy, disjointed realities and build the clean, functional software needed to make sense of them.

Ultimately, I'm building a toolkit that allows me to not only analyze complex data but also write the engineering solutions required to act on it. I'm always looking for the next challenging project, research opportunity, or team to collaborate with.

Business and Personal Socials