Personal
Microblog
2023
July Pittsburgh friends visit for my birthday
July Free tickets to the Seattle Art Fair
July Visited the Quietest Room on Earth at Microsoft
July Vancouver for a weekend
July Steph's beautiful wedding with incredible food & dancing
July Sunbreak with LA friends
June Listened to Jaron Lanier speak and demoed at HCAIX MSR day
June Visited Olympic NP
June FORKS! Twilight photo ops and visited the twilight museum
June Candy visits, and we drive the Olympic Loop over a few days
June Appeared in a Tony's commercial for CMU for 300ms
June Surprised Srin in Atlanta for her karoake birthday
June Jake teaches me to sail
Summer Intern with the EPIC team at Microsoft Research
May Visited Glacier NP (and did freezing hikes)
May Spent the ENTIRE day at Meow Wolf Convergence Station Denver
May Visited World's Largest Truck Stop in Iowa
May Cross country road trip with Swap and Alex: Pgh -> Chicago -> Iowa -> Nebraska -> Denver -> Glacier -> Spokane -> Seattle
May Lilian's graduation @ UIUC
May Steph's bachelorette in Cancun - super fun
May Lilian's graduation @ UIUC
May Parents visited me in Pittsburgh for first time
May Got 2nd at Mario's Southside trivia B)
April Beta tested an immersive AR art exhibit for the Shed
April Friends hosted a super fun cross Pittsburgh, all day scavenger hunt
April Went up the Airport Control Tower of Allegheny airport
April Acted in the SCS Musical - Thomas Jefferson in Cabinet Battle #1
April Watched Melissa Villasenor live at CMU
April Hosted AMC Beer Math Round 2 - got 2nd place this time
Spring Learned woodworking. Made a laptop stand, phone stand, crate, and folding stool!
February Interviewed for several Cut Keep it 100 videos
January Maggie wrote/hosted a murder mystery dinner, where I got away with murder
January Rabbit hole symposium - 5 minute presentations on random topics. I presented body modifications.
January Rode the Duquesne incline for the first time
January LeiOut with Columbia friends
2022
December Hawaii trip with family (Everyone got sick by the 3rd day :( )
December Tahoe trip with Mrinal, Abby, Jake, and Blaine.
December Flew to Tampa to stay on a resort and attend Jake's cousin's wedding
November ICMI in Bangalore, first time in India! Street markets, brain museum (touched real organs), incredible food
October UIST in Bend, Oregon. Great keynote by Ted Chiang, and a beautiful hike at Smith Rock.
October Went to my first ever wedding - Jake & Paige
October Acadia fall break trip with Daphne, Mateo, Swapnil, and Rohan
October First ever RI PhD retreat at Seven Springs
October Ravi hosts Dall-E game night where we guess the Dall-E prompt
October Published an article in XRDS (Designing for Haptics)
September Hosted a ramen tasting / ranking party with 11 random brands, then statistically ranked them
September Went to THE Angry Orchard (with Funk)
August Bridesmaid dress shopping with Steph in Seattle
August Spelunked at Craters of the Moon NP
August Toured the world's first nuclear power plant, EBR-I
August Drove through Yellowstone in the dark - saw some geysers
August Visited Grand Teton NP
August Saw Mt. Rushmore
August Visited Badlands NP and Wall Drug
August Stopped in Vivian, South Dakota
August Went in the world's largest Corn Palace
August Toured the Mall of America and House of Balls in Minneapolis
August Drove cross country Pittsburgh → Seattle. Illinois -> Wisconsin -> South Dakota -> Wyoming -> Idaho ->Washington
August Visit Grounds for Sculpture and cool Ringing Rocks park
July Pittsburgh friends visit for my birthday
July Wildwood with NYC friends
July Pull Gestures accepted to ICMI
July NBC vid on Today Show
July NBC vid on Nightly News w/ Lester Holt. He says "wow"!
July NBC came to film our lab because of MouthHaptics
July Made a “Birds Aren’t Real” poster on a Risograph machine
Summer Lived in NYC, working at Meta Reality Labs
April First ever in person conference, CHI 2022 in New Orleans
April Get interviewed by many news sources about MouthHaptics
April I got honorable mention for NSF GRFP
March MouthHaptics wins BEST PAPER at CHI!
March Visited the Mapparium in Boston
March Spring break Boston trip with Mateo and Jake
March Biked circles in the Point State Park fountain, and climbed in center
February Hosted a “drinking & AMC” competition, where you get points for beer or math
January Got used billboard sign right off the posts, made art (pants, vest, etc.)
2021
November Hiked Pittsburgh’s northside stairs, 16 miles and 237 flights
November Two CHI Paper acceptances! (MouthHaptics & ControllerPose)
November Tried out for USA Worlds Beach Ultimate Team! Was a great experience but really hard
November Skived on work w/ Chris & Craig to raft
October Human Spider for Halloween
Fall Learned glass blowing
September Helped run Pinnacle, Olympics of Hackathons
September FarOut Touch wins best paper at SUI :)
July Played college survivor, made the merge!! but then got 8th place after being voted most likely to win
Spring First paper acceptance! FarOut Touch @ SUI
January Wasp stung my EYE
2020
October Schwartz Entrepreneurial Fellow at CMU
October Match with Chris Harrison of Future Interfaces Group - his welcome gift is a lockpicking set
August Started my PhD in Robotics @ CMU
August Drove cross country, from LA to Pittsburgh, taking Southern route
March Walked top to bottom of Manhattan, 16 miles
February Attended Almighty Opp, weird puppet show in LA
February Road trip to NM for MeowWolf
Spring Worked backstage on Avenger’s campus for months
Spring Worked as Disney imagineer on the Spiderman webshooters ride
2019
December Featured singing into Karoake mic on James Corden. Also won a T-shirt for my enthusiasm during the show
November Bugible Thanksgiving! 18 course meal with every dish made with bugs
September Was on Let’s Make a Deal! They asked me a "quick cash question" (show me something in your bag with fruit) but I failed...
Fall Worked at Conservation X Labs
Fall Worked at San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research on an autonomous animal (polar bear) monitoring system
September Learned to walk on stilts (BM)
September Tickled by a professional dominatrix (BM)
September Climbed on Thunderdome while on shrooms (BM)
September Attended Burning Man: Metamorphasis
August Got stuck on ocean with Thai man trying to scam us
July Prostrated for 1.5 hours up a temple on Mt. Putuo
July Spent an entire week with ZERO communciation
July Learned KungFu with Shaolin Monks, both 8 trigrams and 12 forms
July Shaved head bald
July Lived at the South Shaolin Monastery in Fujian for a month
June Visited abandoned Buddhist Hell theme park, Har Paw villa
Spring Learned to Fence (PE)
February Watched Physicist Brian Greene record Light Falls, live
January Learned a lot at the Disgusting Food Museum
January Toured the Hiroshi Ishiguro Labs, where I voiced a humanoid robot and held a robot baby
2018
September Attended Grace Hopper as Microsoft Scholar
August Worked overnight at Disney’s California Adventure for two weeks
July Met Grant Imahara at Stuntronics demo
Summer - Fall Worked at Disney Research
June Microsoft Sponsor Prize at Capitol360
May Clefhangers sang at graduation, Roar Lions Roar
May Facebook F8 hackathon as F8 fellow
April Met Dominique Ansel and got a private tech tour!
April Second tattoo: SOTG (frisbee) on wrist. Designed myself.
March Had dinner next to the Prince of Lichtenstein
March Presented XPerience on international Catholic TV
March Explained VR to the Cardinal of Science (who didn’t speak English)
March Finalist at VHacks, Hackathon at the Vatican!
February Watched Martha Stewart live... she SUCKS
January Watched Trevor Noah live
2017
December Alfred Aho last ever class (now a Turing Award winner)
October SWE Conference
October Ada Lovelace Fellow at the OSHWA Conference in Denver
September Nude modelled for figure drawing club
September Modelled in CultureShock
September Top 10 finalist at HackMIT for SmartBike, an embedded systems bike kit with various sensors + taillights
August Spent a month with nonprofit CodePhil in Lavazares, Philippines
July Got an NFC microchip embedded in my hand
July Went to DEFCon
June Watched the US Sumo Open with some of the world’s best
June Competed in A16Z Battle of the Hacks
Summer Worked at NASA JPL for the Mars Sample Return mission
April Was FB friends with and chatted Martin Shkreli
February Ran CodeDay NY near the FlatIron
February Met Charles Duke, astronaut from Apollo 16
February Attended West Point Military Ball
February Ran DevFest with Tristan Harris as keynote
January 2nd place at PennApps
2016
November Hung out with Awkwafina again, this time at CSC Lunar Gala
November Convinced guard to lead me to roof of tallest Dallas building
November Ran Dallas CodeDay
October Ran the Columbia Makerspace MakerFaire booth at World MakerFaire
September Intel Sponsor prize at HackMIT
July Saw Muay Thai worlds
July Visited Chan in Vietnam, tried turtle for the first time
Summer Played on HK National Women’s Ultimate Team
Summer Studied abroad at HKUST
April Attended NASA Space Apps NYC
April Finally got the tattoo I’ve wanted for 5 years. Fire on collarbone
February Hung out with Awkwafina at a concert at Barnard, sang on stage with her
2015
September Modelled in AAA CultureShock
January Learned to walk on ball, spin plates, juggle