Pixie

An insurance risk engine where agents investigate and code computes every number.

Built solo at Hack the North 2026; won the Intact and Federato tracks. One risk engine runs two products: a commercial underwriting desk and a consumer insurance phone app. Agents decide what to look up and write the explanation; code computes every score, price and total, and a sentence with a number the tools did not return is blocked.

Status: Live, built September 18, 2026 to September 20, 2026
Kind: AI agents, Mobile
Event: Hack the North 2026
Stack: Next.js, FastAPI, Expo, Elastic
Live: https://pixie-underwriting.vercel.app
Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/pixie-8vlj7g
Code: https://github.com/benz16107/pixie-htn2026
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O47V32zbv20

Ben Zhou

A man fishing off a sea wall, silhouetted against a cloudy sky — Photograph by Ben, June 2024

Toronto

Ben Zhou

Third-year Computer Science and Finance/Economics student at the University of Toronto. Builds software, mostly at hackathons, and takes photographs.

See the work Resume

Business card, to turn and flip

About

Education

University of Toronto, St. George
B.Sc. Computer Science and Finance/Economics, expected June 2028

Experience

Stealth Software Engineer, StealthMay 2026 to present · Toronto Launching soon.

Sponsorship Coordinator, Hack the ValleyMar 2026 to present · Toronto

CUSEC Director of Technology, CUSEC (Canadian University Software Engineering Conference)Mar 2026 to present

Research and Development Manager, Rotman Commerce FinTech AssociationMar 2026 to present · Toronto

Marketing Manager, Rotman Commerce Venture Capital GroupMar 2026 to present · Toronto Designed and built rcventure.ca.

Research

Context-Based Captioning System, UofT Trustworthy Machine IntelligenceSept 2025 to Apr 2026 Fine-tuned Whisper for lecture speech recognition, producing real-time captions and corrected transcripts.

Hackathons

11 wins2 organized15+ attended

Photography

Shoots Sony: cities, water, cars, and the people in them. Took Photography 11 and 12 in high school, and made a short film (2023) and a music video (2024). See the photographs.

Languages

English and Mandarin Chinese (native), French (limited)

Tools

Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Swift, Dart, Java, C++, SQL, Next.js, React, Node.js, Django, FastAPI, Flutter, Tailwind, PyTorch, Hugging Face, OpenCV, Git, GitHub, Docker, Postgres, Solana, Unity, Arduino, NVIDIA Jetson, ROS, SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro

Projects

UofTime
A UofT timetable builder: pick sections on a week grid, see the walk between classes, subscribe from your calendar.
Pixie
An insurance risk engine where agents investigate and code computes every number.
Blad
An iPad note-taking app for lectures where notes stay ordinary files in a folder you pick.
rcventure.ca
The website for RCVC, the UofT venture capital club he markets.
tradex
A marketplace where AI agents pay each other per call in USDC on Solana.
MarketMaker
A desktop paper-trading app for US stocks.
canvas-companion
Mirrors his UofT Quercus courses to disk, twice a day.
Keypace
A native Mac typing-speed test, on the Mac App Store.
Cracked City
Road-damage triage for Toronto: what to fix first, and what it costs.
AI Dance Generator
Upload a song, get a stick-figure dance synced to it, exported for TikTok.
ConfidensAI
A pay-per-use AI agent on GOAT Network mainnet.
Tidal Wordle
Competitive beach Wordle with a 3D wave scene driven by real tide data.
Artifex
Product idea to spec, brand research, concept images, then real 3D meshes.
OOPS
Tactical route-risk guidance built from flight telemetry and map intelligence.
Eco-Pulse
Urban heat and tree-planting planner for Montreal.
Packwise
AI packing companion for iOS and Android.
Pentagon
Supply-chain risk platform built around explainable agent traces.
DataFrame
A node canvas where every node runs real Python in your browser.
Nova
An in-room hotel voice concierge.
RouteWatch
Tracks how long a drive actually takes over weeks.
BlindSpot
Walking navigation for blind and low-vision users.
Context-Based Captioning System
Real-time lecture captions and corrected transcripts from a fine-tuned Whisper model.