About Me

Hi, I'm Kai. I am a Software Engineering Intern at Snowflake and a 4th year Computer Science and Statistics student at the University of Waterloo. I am interested in distributed systems, low-latency and low-level programs, and algorithms.

As a Software Engineering Intern at Jane Street, I improved the availability of retail order ports through data replication to speed up endpoint recovery time after node failure by 100x, as well as implemented a failure detection library and automatic failovers.

As a Research Intern at Uber ATG, I did deep learning research on intelligent vehicle-to-vehicle communication in cooperative self-driving.

As a Software Engineering Intern at MemSQL (a distributed database, now SingleStore), I developed efficient search algorithms for the distributed query optimizer to find optimal join plans significantly faster and better backup join plans

As an Android Software Development Student at BlackBerry, I improved the BlackBerry Hub+ Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, and Notes Android apps.

I also enjoy competitive math and programming. I achieved a Silver Medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2016, was on the 4th Place Team in the ACM-ICPC East Central North America Regional Contest in 2018, and received Honorable Mentions in the Putnam Mathematical Competition in 2018 and 2019.

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Chat for Class

A messaging app for schools that allows students and teachers to branch new conversations from the current one, for a more organized and efficient method of communication.

Built with Node.js, Express, MongoDB, AWS S3, Redis, Socket.IO, and React.js.

Route Planner

Finds the shortest route visiting a list of up to 10 places, specified by exact address or a place name. Used Bitmask Dynamic Programming, Breadth First Search, Google Maps Places API, Directions API, and Distance Matrix API.

Built with Java, XML, SQLite, and Android Studio.

VM

Vim-like text editor. Implemented a Splay (Self-Balancing Binary Search) Tree to optimize text insertion and deletion time. Designed the architecture using object-oriented principles and the Model-View-Controller framework.

Built with C++.

Find and Search

An Android app that makes finding and searching text in photos simple, convenient, and fast.

Built with Java, XML, and Android Studio.