LabStocker
The project that taught me systems.
A cloud inventory platform for chemistry labs — built from my own research-lab experience, published at Brazilian chemistry conferences, and recognized among top national student chemistry projects.
The problem
Before I studied computer science, I spent two years working in a chemistry research lab. A lot of the work depended on simple things going right: knowing which reagents were available, where they were stored, who had used them, whether they were expired, and when new materials needed to be ordered.
That sounds administrative, but in a lab it affects everything. A missing reagent can stall an experiment. Poor visibility can lead to waste. Incorrect storage can create safety risks. And when the system is mostly spreadsheets, memory, and informal coordination, the lab becomes harder to run as more students, professors, and projects depend on the same materials.
LabStocker came from that frustration. I wanted to build a real inventory system for chemistry labs — one that treated reagents, safety, usage, and purchasing as connected parts of the same workflow.
What I built
LabStocker started as a Java desktop application and later expanded into a cloud-based web platform for managing chemical reagents and laboratory inventory.
The system tracked reagents, lots, quantities, expiration dates, storage locations, users, responsible parties, loans, returns, and compatibility groups for safer chemical storage. It also included dashboards and reports for stock levels, usage patterns, and early predictive reorder planning.
The goal was not only to catalog chemicals, but to help a lab make better decisions: reduce waste, avoid running out of critical materials, improve safety practices, and plan purchases with more context.
Research and recognition
Under the guidance of Prof. Roberto Lima, LabStocker became both a software project and a chemistry research project — eventually presented at national conferences and recognized among Brazil's top student chemistry projects.
In 2015, the project returned as LabStocker.com, a web platform for reagent management. That version emphasized productivity, waste reduction, safer storage through compatibility groups, cost planning, dashboards, statistical consumption forecasts, and simultaneous access across desktop, tablet, and smartphone devices.
The project was also recognized among the top three Brazilian student chemistry projects at the National Brazilian Chemistry Congress in 2015 and 2016.
Business prototype
LabStocker also became my first experience thinking about software as a product, not just an application.
Together with two classmates, Amanda Myris and Bruno Valniery, I worked on business creation and development around the platform: who the users were, how laboratories might adopt it, how different institutions could have customized versions, and how a technical tool could become a service for schools, universities, and research labs.
That part mattered: it was the first time I saw engineering, user needs, research, and product strategy meet in the same project.
Engineering depth
LabStocker was one of the first projects where I had to connect engineering with real operational use cases: inventory workflows, lab safety, purchasing decisions, and the practical constraints of people sharing the same materials across different experiments.
It pushed me to think beyond code complexity alone. Beyond building screens and database tables, the challenge was modeling a real domain carefully enough that the system could support decisions: what was available, what was running low, what was expiring, what needed to be reordered, and how usage patterns could inform future demand.
That experience shaped how I think about software as product infrastructure — not just something that works technically, but as something that helps people coordinate, plan, and make better decisions in a real environment.