I am graduate of the University of Southern California (USC) with a M.S. in Computer Science. I am passionate about software engineering, AI, VR, computer graphics, games, graphic design, and art. Take a look below to see what I've been up to.

Projects

Machine Learning for Game Level Optimization

USC Viterbi School of Engineering, 2019

Under the supervision of Scott Easley, Senior Lecturer of Computer Science at USC, my team and I set out to develop a machine learning algorithm to design levels of a tower defense game. We optimized our algorithm to maximize the player enjoyment, defined as a combination of strategy (how many resources does the player have to work with?) and difficulty (how close do the enemies come to reaching the goal?). Levels were optimized incrementally with design updates based on the performance of an AI player (trained with a Q-learning model). Below is a screenshot from the tower defense game and a flowchart of the entire system.

Holographic Examination for Lifelike Motility

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2018–2019

The purpose of this project was to develop a machine learning based approach to detect and track the motion of microorganisms and ultimately determine whether or not they are alive. Specifically, we used hand-labeled video data from a digital holographic microscope. We used a genetic algorithm to select the best combination of preprocessing, detection, and tracking methods and to tune the various hyperparameters. Shown below is a video of motile E. Coli along with output from a tracking algorithm I created. In the future, the software developed in this project will make its way on-board a spacecraft and travel to ocean worlds such as Europa in search of extraterrestrial life.

Cardiac Arrhythmia Detection from ECG using Deep NNs

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2018

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and costs over $300 billion annually. Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common heart arrhythmia and has a significant risk of death. Because of this, there is a need for automatic diagnosis of AFib from ECG signals. In this project, I set out to construct a deep neural network to diagnose heart conditions. The four categories of ECG signals I looked at were normal, AFib, other arrhythmia, and too noisy to tell. I constructed a 16-layer 1D convolutional neural network and trained it on over 8,000 ECGs. In the end, the network achieved 82% accuracy in diagnosing AFib with a false positive rate of 0.01.

Prosthetic Spinal Cord for Tetraplegic Patients

Senior Capstone, 2018

In order to restore mobility to tetraplegic patients, my group worked on a project to read EEG signals from the brain and interpret them as muscle movements. To first understand how the brain sends signals to the muscles, we set out to create a scenario in which people must control a prosthetic hand using unintuitive muscle movements. To achieve this, we created a VR environment and motor-controlled robotic hand. We then had users control the robotic hand by playing a dexterity-based game in VR and observed how they learned to control the hand. The project is in continual development, but the intermediate goal is to allow users to control a single finger using EEG readings alone.

Visualization of the Mars 2020 Rover

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2017

The aim of this project was to assist the robotics group with the visualization of the Mars 2020 rover by writing rendering software and creating exporter functions. I developed three different programs for rendering and exporting 3D models of the rover and also debugged existing render software. In the future, the software will be used by rover drivers to generate command sequences. Different outputs of the software are shown in the pictures below.

Virtual Reality Motion Controller

2016–2017

The motivation behind this project was to create a hands-free VR motion controller, allowing users complete control of in-game movements using only their feet. The controller needed to be lightweight and portable, while still providing a natural and intuitive feel. A Wii Balance Board was used as the controller, which was connected to Unity through Bluetooth. By shifting their weight on the balance board, users were able to navigate complex terrain and even drive vehicles.

Tractor Beam Terror

2015

Tractor Beam Terror is an 8-bit 2D platformer reminiscent of classic arcade games. Players take control of a UFO and try to abduct animals while dodging planes.

Heal

Hacktech, 2016

Heal provides quick and easy medical advice for the 21st century. No need to speak to a doctor or look up your symptoms online. Users can just message a professional through their phone, and they will be connected to a doctor immediately. Heal does not require internet access and will even define medical terminology using Wolfram technology.

Link

https://devpost.com/software/promptme

Git Motivated

Hacktech, 2016

Git Motivated is a web app that tells you how many calories you would burn and how much money you would save if you walked, biked, or ran instead of driving to a particular location. Just input your starting and ending location to see the difference you can make by ditching your car and getting some exercise.

Link

https://devpost.com/software/git-motivated

Likefai

HackSC, 2015

Likefai is a web app that suggests photos for users to post on Instagram. Using image recognition software, Likefai determines what types of photos you normally post and which ones are more popular among your followers and then suggests new photos from your album to post.

Link

https://devpost.com/software/likefai

Graphics

Everwell Pasadena

During an web and graphics internship at Everwell Pasadena, I designed graphic icons for several of the company's intern groups and created mockups for several webpages of the company's management system. The intern group logos were used as icons for group chats while the website mockups were used to design components of the management system, which was under construction at the time.

Intern Group Icons

Website Mockups

Games

For my most recent game, Tractor Beam Terror, I created a series of images to populate the app. The start screen backdrop was inspired by 1950s movie posters, while the rest of the app is meant to resemble classic arcade games. Backgrounds, sprites, and other designs were all crafted in Photoshop.

Artwork

Publications

A Prolific Catalyst for Selective Conversion of Neat Glycerol to Lactic Acid

Abstract

We report the synthesis and reactivity of a very robust iridium catalyst for glycerol to lactate conversion. The high reactivity and selectivity of this catalyst enable a sequence for the conversion of biodiesel waste stream to lactide monomers for the preparation of poly(lactic acid). Furthermore, experimental data collected with this system provide a general understanding of its reactive mechanism.

Link

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscatal.5b02732

A Prolific Catalyst for Dehydrogenation of Neat Formic Acid

Abstract

Formic acid is a promising energy carrier for on-demand hydrogen generation. Because the reverse reaction is also feasible, formic acid is a form of stored hydrogen. Here we present a robust, reusable iridium catalyst that enables hydrogen gas release from neat formic acid. This catalysis works under mild conditions in the presence of air, is highly selective and affords millions of turnovers. While many catalysts exist for both formic acid dehydrogenation and carbon dioxide reduction, solutions to date on hydrogen gas release rely on volatile components that reduce the weight content of stored hydrogen and/or introduce fuel cell poisons. These are avoided here. The catalyst utilizes an interesting chemical mechanism, which is described on the basis of kinetic and synthetic experiments.

Link

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms11308