Headshot of Bobby Yan

Contact

website: bobbyy.org
email: me (at) bobbyy.org
on the web: github · twitter · google scholar

Education

2021 - present
  • B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
  • International Baccalaureate Diploma. Advanced Science Program.

Experience

Research Intern

Jun 2021 – Sep 2021
Interactive Intelligence (now MLR) team, Apple
  • Worked on understanding how data quality affects fairness. Developed and implemented an approach to reduce fairness violations in multi-class classification via dataset reweighting.
  • Methods and results submitted and accepted at DataPerf @ ICML 2022.

Research Assistant

May 2019 – May 2021
RISE Lab, UC Berkeley

Head Teaching Assistant

Jun 2019 – Aug 2020
College of Engineering, UC Berkeley
  • Head TA for CS 162: Operating Systems, TA for CS 188: Artificial Intelligence.
  • Taught weekly discussion sections of ~35 students, held weekly office hours, homework and project parties.
  • Led exam reviews. Wrote and graded exams for upper-division classes.
  • Contributed and reviewed course contents, including lecture notes, homework, projects, and exams.
  • Improved course infrastructures and revamped the course website for CS 188.
  • Average teaching rating of 6.32/7.00, 0.55 above the department average.

Undergraduate Researcher

Jun 2020 – Oct 2020
Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab, UC Berkeley
  • Research in deep reinforcement learning, working on safe RL, efficient policy optimization with safety constraints with Ashwin Balakrishna and Brijen Thananjeyan, advised by Prof. Ken Goldberg.
  • Developed methods to improve the scalability and stability of model-based RL algorithms based on model predictive control

Undergraduate Researcher

Mar 2019 – May 2019
Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab, UC Berkeley
  • Applied domain randomization techniques to train robust domain-invariant object recognition and robot grasping models for surface declustering tasks, by increasing simulated variability to improve the generalizability to the real-world.

Lab Assistant

Jan 2018 – May 2018
CS 61A, UC Berkeley
  • Answered conceptual questions, guided students through problems and debugging during weekly office hours, labs, and project parties.

Publications

Bobby Yan*, Skyler Seto*, Nicholas Apostoloff. DataPerf Workshop @ ICML 2022.
Rolando Garcia, Eric Liu, Vikram Sreekanti, Bobby Yan, Anusha Dandamudi, Joseph E. Gonzalez, Joseph M. Hellerstein, Koushik Sen. VLDB 2021.

Honors & Awards

Stanford School of Engineering Fellowship

2021
Awarded in support of graduate studies at Stanford University.

Dean's List, Honors to Date, UC Berkeley

2017 - 2020
Top 10% academic performance in College of Engineering for all semesters.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

2019
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow at RISE Lab, UC Berkeley.

IEEE Eta Kappa Nu (HKN)

2018
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Honor Society.

Tau Beta Pi (TBP)

2018
National Engineering Honor Society | Top eighth of Engineering students at UC Berkeley.

Edward Kraft Award

2017
Highest scholastic records obtainable by freshman at Berkeley | 4.0 GPA with 20 units.

Gold Award, Nanyang Research Symposium

2016
Finalist and "Best in Electrical and Electronic Engineering", NTU (Singapore).

Dean's List

2016
Top 10% in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry.

Silver Medal, TI-Cup Math Contest

2015
International Shanghai TI-Cup Mathematics Contest

Seow Poh Leng Medal

2015
Top student in class of 2014, ACS (Independent).

Projects

Jun 2019 - May 2021
  • A record-replay system for efficient hindsight logging in model training.
Jun 2019 - Aug 2019
  • Class website for CS 188: Artificial Intelligence.
Dec 2018 – Apr 2019
  • A deep RL agent that plays Gomoku (a.k.a. Five in a Row) through random and self plays.
Nov 2018 – Dec 2018
  • Placed in the top 2% of 300+ teams in NP-Hard constrained graph partitioning contest using a combination of METIS multilevel k-way partitioning scheme, greedy vertex swaps, local search, and simulated annealing.
Jan 2018 – May 2018
  • Built a voice-controlled electric car and implemented closed-loop control system to reduce disturbance and error in car movements. Employed signal filtering, PCA and K-means clustering to distinguish voice commands and determine the spoken words.
  • A fast and versatile QR Code Generator.
  • An addictive and beautiful-looking (gorgeous on the iPhone X OLED display) arcade game with tilt-free gameplay, a nice BGM, and cool sound effects.
2017
  • A language-learning-oriented social networking app built using Swift 3 and Firebase.
  • Over 25,000 views per month.
  • Compilation of notes and guides for high school students to study and prepare for IB exams.
Jun 2016 - Dec 2019
  • A practical and highly effective app for learning new Spanish words, with over 15k downloads and more than 1,000 active users.
Dec 2015 - May 2016
  • Official website for TEDx events organized at ACS (Independent), Singapore.

Skills

Programming

Strongest: Python • JavaScript/TypeScript

Strong: C/C++ • SQL • HTML/CSS

Familiar: Java • Shell Scripting • Lisp

Technologies

General

Frequently used: Git • LaTeX • Docker • Linux

Web

Frequently used: React • Node.js • SASS • PostgreSQL • GraphQL • Nginx

Often used: Next.js • Gatsby

Previously used: Firebase • MongoDB • NoSQL

Python

Frequently used: pandas • NumPy • PyTorch • scikit-learn

Often used: TensorFlow • Selenium • BeautifulSoup • Flask

Relevant Coursework

CS 61AStructure & Interpretation of Computer Programs
CS 61BData Structures
CS 61CMachine Structures & Computer Architecture
CS 70Discrete Math & Probability
Math 53Multivariable Calculus
CS 161Computer Security
CS 162Operating Systems & Systems Programming
CS 168Internet Architecture & Protocols
CS 170Efficient Algorithms & Intractible Problems
CS 186Database Systems
CS 188Artificial Intelligence
CS 189Machine Learning
CS 285Deep Reinforcement Learning
EECS 127Convex Optimization
Data 100Principles & Techniques of Data Science
EE 16A|BDesigning Information Devices and Systems
Physics 7A|BPhysics for Scientists and Engineers
CS 195Social Implications of Computing

Languages

Mandarin

Fluent

English

Fluent

Spanish

Basic
2 years in high school, 1 year in college.

Prizes

  • 1st Place (out of 830+ teams)
  • 1st Place (out of 630+ teams)
  • 2nd Place (out of 670+ teams)
  • Honor Roll of Distinction – 2016
  • Honor Roll of Distinction – 2015
  • High Distinction – 2015
  • Silver Medal – 2015
2015 - 2016
  • Honor – 2016
  • Distinction – 2015
  • Distinction – 2014
  • Distinction – 2014
  • Gold award – 2015
  • Gold award – 2014
  • Honor Roll of Distinction – 2014
  • Distinction – 2013
  • Gold medal – 2013