Shawn Capper

I'm an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying urban planning, GIS, and statistics. My interest lay in the fields of economic, urban, and sex geography and I employ tools such as ArcGIS, Python, and R to address issues in a data driven and visual way.

Research Assistantships

Work conducted at the University of Toronto

2026 Winter
2025 Fall
Labour and Union Dynamics in Public-Private Partnerships
Economics
2024 Fall
Resident Experience with Urban Noise
Sociology
2024 Summer
Big Tech and Online Harms Affecting Minors
Canadian Studies
2024 Winter
2023 Fall
Alumni Outcomes
Political Science

Featured Projects

Reperium | University Portal

Reperium is an AI-powered university portal that helps students quickly find courses, jobs, and research opportunities by chatting with a chatbot, saving them from sorting through hundreds of irrelevant postings. For this project, I led the front-end development using Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS, focusing on creating a responsive, intuitive interface that works seamlessly across devices. To power the platform’s data needs, I developed a Python web scraping pipeline that automatically extracts, cleans, and structures over 10,000 data points from multiple university sources into a PostgreSQL database, ensuring that users have access to accurate, up-to-date opportunities.

Next.jsPostgreSQLPython+2

Haladay | Learning Management System

Haladay is a full-stack, all-in-one LMS CRUD system. Built using Dart and Flutter for the web app and Java (JavaFX) for the desktop program, it provides seamless, cross-platform functionality integrating Firebase and Google Cloud functions.

DartFlutterJava+2

Parrot | TTS & STT Application

Parrot is a front-end for speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and realtime OpenAI models.

Next.jsTailwind CSSTypeScript

Badger | File Transfer Utility

A versatile C++ utility for copying files and directories with support for in-memory operations, streaming, CRC32 hashing, PSARC archive handling, multi-threading, and multi-destination transfers. Badger is primarily intended for transferring from a high-speed, external, source, to a lower-speed destination ensuring copy in the event the source drive is disconnected.

AssemblyC++

Technical Skills

Programming

C++JavaJavaScriptPythonRSQL

Research & Analysis

ArcGISArchivalContent AnalysisEthnographyNVivoSPSS

GitHub Contributions

2025

Select Publications

Tiny Terrors: The Microplastic Problem in the North Atlantic Ocean

Capper, S.

Review Article

2024
EnvironmentGeologyGIS
Read Paper

Systemic Rights Abuses Caused by Deplorable Indigenous Reserve Conditions in Canada

Capper, S.

Research Paper

2022
Canadian IssuesLaw