Toni LaBarbara

Adjunct Professor, Villanova, PA                                                                                                                             1/2026 – 5/2026 

Villanova University College of Engineering

o  Proposed, designed, and instructing Data Analytics & Storytelling to teach engineering students Python, Machine Learning, and AI tools for quantitative research of social injustices (incarceration, wealth disparity, climate change).
o  Youngest adjunct professor in Villanova’s history, teaching 27 students in Spring 2026.

​

Quantitative Research Intern, New York, NY                                                                                                     6/2025 – 8/2026
Quantitative Research, ESG, & Strategy, Wolfe Research, LCC        

o  Engineered sentiment analysis data pipeline to quantify policy stance of Fed communications, called the Hawkish-Dovish Index (HDI), using GPT models, producing three research articles and interactive dashboard with Plotly/Dash.
o   Built NLP pipeline with specialized web-scraping for 6 global central banks, prompt-engineered LLM scoring rubrics with few-shot learning for model evaluation, achieving an average F1 score of 0.85 for GPT 4.1.
o   Sold to clients including Millennium and the Texas Teachers Retirement System, evaluated at $50,000 per client. Presented at a webinar with over 200 registered participants.

​

Engineering Intern, Siaya, Kenya                                                                                                                            1/2025 – 5/2025

Siaya Muungano Network & Uzima 

o   Led entrepreneurship workshop at Siaya Institute of Technology, resulting in 5 pilot ventures.
o   Designed water tower and solar powered pump for Nina School of the Deaf.
o   Distributed water filters and led instructional sanitation demonstrations in 7 communities in Siaya.

​

Engineering Intern, Oti, Ghana                                                                                                                              8/2024 – 12/2024
Lifetime Wells International

o   Built 3 handpumps for water wells in Oti region of Ghana.
o   Led workshop for pump mechanics to standardize data management for the nonprofit in ArcGIS.

​

Engineering Intern, Trujillo, Peru                                                                                                                          8/2023 – 7/2024
WindAid Institute

o    Manually fabricated and installed two 200-Watt turbines using local materials (welding, circuitry, shop tools).
o    Technical translation and interpretation of manuals and meetings between English and Spanish.
 

Environmental Engineering Undergraduate Researcher                                                                              1/2022 – 8/2023
Environmental Interfacial Chemistry Group
o    Coded data visualization of dynamic time series for 14 experiments using Numpy.
o    Led senior capstone project as sophomore student, and mentored freshman researcher.
o    Innovated filtration system using biochar to sustainably remove up to 80% PFAS from drinking water.
o    Drafted/edited research proposals and manuscripts, group presentations.

o    Received VURF and MATCH research grants through Villanova University for undergraduate research.

​
Head Legislative Researcher                                                                                                                                   6/2021 – 10/2021

Labor Movement X

o    Headed research teams on developing demands for a national general strike of over 2000 people 

o    Published Medium articles covering environmental health, voting rights, fair working conditions and benefits, etc.