About Me
Academic Interests
My research interests in AI are rooted in understanding AI deeper for the purpose of making it safer and more useful to society.
My AI safety-focused research interests stem from my involvement in the AI Safety Student Team at Harvard, a student group dedicated to reducing risks from advanced AI. One issue I’m interested in is how AI models today are black-boxes—we don’t know how they work internally. This makes it ethically ambiguous whether we should trust AI with performing high-stakes tasks like medical procedures or ruling court cases, because even if they perform as good or better than human experts, they still lack the ability to explain how they come to their decisions as humans can do. Thus, I’m very interested in AI interpretability research, which seeks to interpret the inner workings of AI models.
On the empirical side, I’m interested in research surrounding the deployment of AI in real-world scenarios. Today, we have computers that can beat humans at chess, Dota 2, and poker, yet fail to perform simple tasks in the real world such as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This can be especially dangerous in scenarios such as autonomous vehicles or healthcare. Thus, I’m interested in research areas such as reinforcement learning and sensorimotor learning that address the challenges that come with deploying toy AI models in real-world environments.
Besides AI, I’m also interested in theoretical CS, algorithmic game theory, and data visualization.
I also love to build things I’d find useful. I think it’s wonderful that using code, I can build products that actually benefit people. My passion for building cool, impactful products has led me to participate in several coding competitions and hackathons, where I’ve met tons of amazing people and learned how much more is out there in the world of software development. Check out some projects I’ve built in my projects tab.
Surprisingly, I don’t only take CS classes; in fact, some of my favorite classes I’ve taken at Harvard have actually been a Chinese history and literature GenEd and a feminism writing course. Check out my coursework tab for all the classes I’ve taken.
Communities
I’m very thankful to the communities I’ve found at Harvard for letting me meet amazing people with common interests. Here, I share some of the homes I’ve found in college so far.
First and foremost, I’m a proud resident of Lowell House (best house!), where I see my blocking group every day; they can always put a smile on my face when I’m stressed about an upcoming midterm. As previously mentioned, I’m a member of Harvard’s AI Safety Student Team, where I discuss the risks of advanced AI with people who are passionate about making sure AI is developed safely. I’m also lucky to get to discuss up-and-coming startups with people who eat and breathe startups in startups @ harvard.
As social chair (and back-up libero) for Harvard Men’s Club Volleyball, I’m tasked with finding the best Thai food deals to feed thirty hungry guys. I serve a similar role as Director of Engagement for Harvard Undergraduate Quantitative Traders, plus I solve NP-hard scheduling problems to organize poker nights that fit everyone’s packed GCals.
I love to decompress by running alongside (or behind) the greats of Harvard College Running Club, and playing my ukulele while singing along (off-key) to hymns at Harvard College Christian Students home meetings.
Taking a Chinese language class my freshman fall made me appreciate how much I connect with people of similar heritage as myself. The summer after my freshman year, I studied abroad in Taiwan for two months, then hopped on a plane to China to teach a class on Decision Theory to high schoolers at the Harvard Summit for Young Leaders in China. Now, I grab weekly dinners with the Taiwanese Cultural Society and host Chinese karaoke nights in my dorm.
Hobbies
In my free time, I love to play volleyball and Spikeball, run (obligatory Strava plug), and gym.
I’m also obsessed with time tracking and eating Chipotle. In fact, my claim to fame is having won a TikTok competition sponsored by Chipotle!
Reading
Let’s be Goodreads friends!
All-time Favorites
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Three-Body Problem (and the rest of the trilogy) by Cixin Liu
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Postcards by Elane Kim
Currently Reading
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Friends
Some of my friends’ personal websites: