Alan's Portfolio

and I am a final-year Computer Science student at UCLA interested in Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science. Feel free to reach me at my email: alanyu111@ucla.edu

I am ecstatic to be returning to Plaid as a New Grad Software Engineer in June 2025 in NYC -- thoughts

Education

University of California, Los Angeles
B.S. Computer Science
GPA: 3.741
Expected Graduation: June 2025

Research:

• Undergrad Researcher at Ozcan Research Group
• Research Profile

Honor Societies:

• Corporate / Entreprenship Director of Upsilon Pi Epsilon CS Honor Society
• Webmaster of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society

Upper Division Elective Courses:

• Distributed Systems (CS134)
• Deep Learning and Neural Networks (ECE147)
• Deep Learning for Computer Vision (CS188)
• Natural Language Processing (CS162)
• Intro to Machine Learning (CSm146)
• Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (CS161)

Industry Experience

Plaid — Software Engineering Intern
Network Enablement
Summer 2024
New York, NY

More Details:

To see more thoughts about the internship, please vist the blog I wrote with Plaid and my Linkedin Post

Technical Details:

• Built decryption pipeline for 200 million rows, unblocked top company-wide project, and brought sprint back on schedule
• Constructed database with Apache Spark and Airflow to query sensitive AWS lakehouse resulting in 7 times faster lookup
• Completed capstone project, including stretch goals, three weeks early; received internship extension for second capstone

Overall Internship Rating:

I was evaluated (out of four) on the following categories: Scope, Technical Skills, and Leadership. I received a 4/4 in all categories, a 4/4 overall, and a return offer.

Comments from Manager's Written Performance Review:

• "Alan has demonstrated exceptional ability to quickly learn and apply new technologies. He successfully ramped up on diverse tools including Apache Spark, Airflow, and our own internal tools like the Data Lake API."
• "Despite not having formal SQL training, Alan took the initiative to learn SQL concepts and effectively applied them to his capstone project, highlighting his self-motivation and ability to acquire new skills as needed."
• "Alan excels at reaching out and working with people both within and outside of his immediate team. While working on his capstone project, he collaborated closely with several engineers in our group, specifically around implementing the Airflow DAG as some of our teammates have experience writing Airflow jobs. For products and tools managed by other teams, he took the initiative to contact those teams directly. He even scheduled and led meetings with external stakeholders, demonstrating his leadership in communication."

Comments from Other Plaids

• "MVP of summer 2024. You brought so much joy to the team, while shipping a ton of impact and helping us make progress on our (redacted) goal. Wish you the best career take-off as you graduate next year! And you know where to find us." - Skip Manager, Henish Shah
• "Congrats Alan! You shipped a ton of impact this summer; can't wait to see what you do next year!" - Head of Engineering, Samir Naik

Some Images:

Tesla — Software Engineering Intern
Firmware and System Controls
Fall 2023
Palo Alto, CA

More Details:

• Improved testing workflow by using CAN-Ethernet to flash and update firmware, resulting in thirty times faster execution
• Reduced excess logs by 98% as measured by average .CSV file size by implementing a Rust update on change program
• Fixed HTTP 429 error using Actix-Web and Rust allowing internal tools to access up-to-date information without timeout

Some Images:

Picture of me next to (then!) new CyberTruck Picture of me next to CyberTruck

Paramount — Software Engineering Intern
Machine Learning with Video Engineering
Summer 2023
Los Angeles, CA

More Details:

• Architected ML based video quality trade-off algorithm using frame complexity resulting in 30% gains in efficiency
• Resolved critical bug in ad-stitching for all video output by developing merging logic with 95% test coverage using Jest
• Created debugging tools in NodeJS using Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS for deployment and pre-production builds

Recommendation:

It was a great privilege to have Alan as an intern at PlutoTV in the summer of 2023. Alan quickly onboarded and was up and running with important knowledge and capability much quicker than most of our experienced hires. He is a quick study and was immediately hands-on with knowledge and skills that made an immediate impact on our team and organization, quickly clearing tech debt for a number of issues in a complex video software stack. Alan has tremendous passion, drive and enthusiasm coupled with a keen intellect and ability to quickly learn new skills and technology. He is also an excellent communicator and is able to understand and articulate problems at a deep level. Alans' focus in his internship was an impressive, interdisciplinary video encoding project to optimally select bitrates using machine learning, an important addition to PlutoTVs technology stack. Alan performed at a level far beyond expectations for a third year student intern, well above the typical level of recent graduates and junior engineers. Alan is an outstanding engineer with a very bright future and we would be thrilled to welcome him back!

From: Mr. James Rose, Direct Manager and Lead Software Engineer at PlutoTV (under Paramount)
Source on Linkedin under "Recommendations"

Some Images:

Picture of me next to Pluto TV Sign

General Atomics — Software Engineering Intern
MQ9 Reaper, ISAR Video Streaming
Summer 2022
San Diego, CA

More Details:

• Led development on new video streamer that processes raw radar data, synthesizes frames, and computes analytics
• Developed robust image decoder with full coverage using C# image library to process raw byte data to generate Bitmaps
• Outputted low-latency live streams with minimal overhead by stitching frames and utilizing FFMPEG to create .mp4 files
• Deployed written feature in mission control software for Sea Guardian Drone with over 10,000 real flying hours in India

Recommendation:

"I was very fortunate to have Alan as an intern at General Atomics in the summer of 2022. At that time I was the Director of the Advanced Concepts group. Alan was immediately (on day 1) given a high visibility task directly by the Vice President of our division. This task was not a simple one, and was previously planned to be executed by a whole team of software engineers over many months. He was able to quickly pivot to the new task and did not shy away from the project scope or high visibility. He took on the full task himself. In addition - this task was in support of a customer deliverable, and was critical for the division. Not only did Alan accomplish the task - he did it with time to spare. He is an excellent problem solver and communicator. He also is able to approach problems with the full big picture view, and routinely offered new solutions and approaches that were better than the original plan. He was a powerhouse as a Freshman intern - I can't wait to see what he accomplishes next!"

From: Dr. Matthew Cornick, Direct Manager and Former Director @ General Atomics
Source on Linkedin under "Recommendations"

Some Images:

A picture of the MQ-9 I got to take home. This was the drone I had the privilege of writing software for: Picture of the Drone I worked on that I got to take home

Picture of the Drone I worked on that I got to take home

Research Experience

Ozcan Research Group @ UCLA — Undergrad Researcher
Built and tuned neural networks, developed user interfaces, and designed experimental setups. Co‑Authored a paper with the American Chemical Society. Google Scholar
October 2021 - Present
Los Angeles, CA

More Details:

• Developed UI in Python using Tkinter allowing for fine-grain control of camera API to take images of paper-based sensor
• Designed desktop widget using QT in C++ utilizing OpenCV library to intelligently detect particles saving 60% in storage
• Best Poster Presentation, issued by Howard Hughes Medical Institute for best Undergrad Research Poster out of ~20 teams
• Trained artificial intelligence and scaled neural networks with PyTorch to identify the type of pollutants using holograms

Paper Abstract:

Exposure to bio-aerosols such as pollen can lead to adverse health effects. There is a need for a portable and cost-effective device for long-term monitoring and quantification of various types of pollen. To address this need, we present a mobile and cost-effective label-free sensor that takes holographic images of flowing particulate matter (PM) concentrated by a virtual impactor, which selectively slows down and guides particles larger than 6 μm to fly through an imaging window. The flowing particles are illuminated by a pulsed laser diode, casting their inline holograms on a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor image sensor in a lens-free mobile imaging device. The illumination contains three short pulses with a negligible shift of the flowing particle within one pulse, and triplicate holograms of the same particle are recorded at a single frame before it exits the imaging field-of-view, revealing different perspectives of each particle. The particles within the virtual impactor are localized through a differential detection scheme, and a deep neural network classifies the pollen type in a label-free manner based on the acquired holographic images. We demonstrated the success of this mobile pollen detector with a virtual impactor using different types of pollen (i.e., bermuda, elm, oak, pine, sycamore, and wheat) and achieved a blind classification accuracy of 92.91%. This mobile and cost-effective device weighs ~700 g and can be used for label-free sensing and quantification of various bio-aerosols over extended periods since it is based on a cartridge-free virtual impactor that does not capture or immobilize PM.
Published as a co-author in the American Chemical Society

Some Images:

1 / 4

Shaking Hands with PI, Professor Ozcan

SHTEM @ Stanford — Team Lead / Mentor
Led 10 research interns in a multi-national study on smell, smell experiences, and technological integration
May 2020 - August 2021
Stanford, CA

More Details:

• Led 10 research interns in a multi-national study on smell, smell experiences, and technological integration
• Used PyTorch, Python, and Principal Component Analysis to classify and identify 10 different smells
• Built a three-part olfactory communication system - from detection to communication to synthesis using C

Some Images:

1 / 1

2019 SHTEM Group Picture

Select Projects

Lockr @ L.A. Hacks — iOS Engineer
We build lockers so you can build trust. An IoT smart locker system.
April 2022

Awards:

• 2nd place overall
• 1st in LA Hacks Best Life Hacks Hack
• DigiKey Sponsored Award

More Details:

• Personal Contributions: I worked on the Swift App where I implemented the map to locate the Lockr and the search feature to find specific items in various Lockrs
• Tech Stack: Our Hardware used Arduino and Common Electronics. Our Kiosk used React Native and Google Firebase. Our Client App was on iOS and programmed with Swift

Links:

• Devpost
• Github Project

Study Spotter @ Google SPS — Participant
Programmed a web application that helps people find study spaces on campus across four different universities
April 2022

More Details:

• Create a backend that fetched data from Google Datastore to dynamically update the webpage using Java, JS, and HTML
• Led UI design by creating page layout, cards, and maps

Links:

• Project Github Link

Contact Me

Email: alanyu111@ucla.edu

Current Resume: Updated June '24

Linkedin: /alan-hai-yu

Github: /111alanyu